Technical writing

Overview

House style for technical documents, composed from conventions used across my repositories. The rules themselves are in English; documents keep their own language: a Dutch document is written and reviewed in Dutch. The structural and truth rules apply in any language; the vocabulary lists in references/style.md are English-specific and other languages carry their own. Core principle: a document states current, verified behavior, conclusion first, with every claim traceable to a source, and every fact living in exactly one place. A thin document beats an overstated one, because the author is the one saying it out loud.

These rules govern documents, not chat replies. Length and section rules apply to running prose, not to reference lists like this file.

When to invoke

Load this skill for any technical prose, then the matching document-type skill on top. These are routing hints; each skill's own body is the authority.

When a repository regularly produces documents, record the invocation in project memory: one line in its CLAUDE.md or the platform's equivalent, telling agents to load this skill for any technical prose there. A skill the project names loads every session; one left to recall loads only when someone thinks of it.