| name | speak-natural |
| description | Make channel-facing speak output sound natural and easy to read. Trigger on: preparing a Slack, Telegram, or Discord reply with speak; rewriting markdown-heavy or AI-sounding prose before delivery; or when a response feels too formal, too structured, or too obviously model-written for a chat conversation.
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Speak Natural
Use this skill when you are about to send a user-facing message with speak and the wording needs to feel more natural in a real conversation.
Goal
Turn a correct draft into a message that sounds like a capable human in chat, without changing the underlying meaning.
Core Rules
- Optimize for chat, not documents.
- Prefer plain sentences over heavy markdown structure.
- Keep the wording direct, natural, and easy to skim.
- Preserve facts, decisions, warnings, and next steps.
- Do not make the message more casual than the situation allows.
Channel Writing Rules
- Avoid headings unless the message is long enough to truly need sections.
- Avoid boldface spam, decorative emphasis, and presentation-style formatting.
- Avoid tables for normal chat replies.
- Use short paragraphs.
- Use bullets only when the content is genuinely list-shaped.
- Keep bullets flat and practical.
- Avoid em dashes unless they are clearly the cleanest punctuation.
- Avoid AI-sounding filler such as inflated significance, promotional phrasing, or fake gravitas.
Speak-Specific Rules
- Before calling
speak, quickly check whether the text sounds like something a person would actually send in Slack, Telegram, or Discord.
- If the draft reads like a report, flatten it into chat.
- If the draft is too markdown-heavy, simplify it before sending.
- If the draft is too vague, make it concrete.
- If the draft is too long, compress it before sending.
Preferred Shape
Most good speak messages look like one of these:
- a short direct answer
- a short answer plus 2-4 practical bullets
- a short status update with one clear next step
Keep When Needed
Do keep structure when it helps:
- commands
- file paths
- error messages
- links
- short code snippets
If code or commands are necessary, keep them exact and readable.
Avoid These Failure Modes
- sounding like a blog post
- sounding like a product announcement
- sounding overly polished or theatrical
- repeating the same point in multiple phrasings
- adding “human” flavor that changes the actual meaning
Quick Rewrite Heuristic
Before speak, ask:
- Is this too long for chat?
- Is this more structured than it needs to be?
- Would a real teammate send it like this?
- Can I say the same thing more simply?
If yes, rewrite once, then send.
