Lucid doc

A document is read by someone who was not in the room, needs to decide or act, and will skim before they read. Give them everything that bears on the decision, with nothing padding it and nothing buried in it.

Every sentence must add a fact, a reason, a number, or a step the reader did not already have. Sentences that fail that test are waffle and get cut: restated diffs, category headings, context left behind a link, paragraphs that would fit any project. Length is what falls out of the test, not a target. The one edit that causes real harm is cutting a risk, a caveat, or a reproduction step to tighten prose, so those are listed under What survives the cut.

Invoke this on a target: a draft, a file, or the thing you are about to write. It is not a session mode, and it does not change how you talk in chat.

What the reader is actually doing

1. They were not in the conversation. Every load-bearing fact has to be in the document. A link is additional reading, never the context itself. If you cite a ticket, a thread, or a dashboard, inline the one sentence that matters.
2. They need to decide or act. Approve or not, adopt or not, or just run the thing. Name the decision or the action early, and where there is a decision, say what you recommend.
3. They skim before they read, and many never stop skimming. Headings and the first sentence of each section are the skim path. If the argument is not on that path, it is not in the document. Some are not choosing to skim: ADHD and dyslexia make paragraph mass a barrier rather than a speed bump, so structure is a floor rather than a trade. Advanced vocabulary is not the problem and does not want simplifying, since a precise uncommon word is one word where its plain-language gloss is six.
4. It gets re-read later, out of context, after the code has moved. Anything that duplicates the diff rots within weeks. Anything that duplicates the code was always redundant.
5. Real typography renders here. Headings, nesting, and tables work properly, which makes over-structuring cheap and therefore common. A nested bullet tree is not an argument.

Layout is yours

This skill does not hand you templates. It says what has to be present, what has to come first, and what has to go. Section order and structure are a judgment call, and they should differ by document.