Reader Briefing

A pre-writing discipline for public articles. The briefing is a short structured document, written before drafting begins, that establishes who the article is for and what they bring to the page. It is the audit anchor that the rest of the writing process compares against.

This skill is foundation infrastructure. Other writing skills (synthesis-article-writing, synthesis-article-refresh, the various backdated- and refresh-style skills) treat a committed briefing as a hard precondition: without one, they refuse to proceed.

Binding rules

1. No public article draft without a committed briefing. Write .briefing.md beside the draft and commit it before drafting; dependent skills refuse to proceed without one, because drafting without it is the failure this skill prevents.
2. Answer the four questions specifically, in plain prose, one paragraph each. "Everyone" or "they understand the topic better" is not an answer.
3. Let the answers set the structure, not a template: the genre's shape (universal-frame-first, scene-first, claim-first, problem-first) follows from them.
4. Declare series dependency as exactly one state: standalone, standalone after compact context, or true prerequisite. A true prerequisite needs a link and a one-sentence reason; no article owes a cross-link quota.
5. Audit each paragraph against the briefing while drafting, and read as a stranger before commit. The writer is the insider, so judgment by feel will not catch insider context collapse.

Contents