name

writing-style

description

Apply Alex's writing voice and AI-tell bans whenever generating recruiter-facing or career-related text — resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn posts/messages/comments, recruiter follow-up emails, application essays, "About Me" / bio sections, interview thank-you notes, or any prose that will be read by a hiring manager, recruiter, or professional contact. Enforces hard bans (em dashes, "Happy to ..." phrasing, AI-tell verbs like leveraged/spearheaded/streamlined/thrilled) and the problem→action→result bullet pattern. Use before drafting, and re-check before returning content.

Writing Style (Digest)

Read this before drafting any recruiter-facing or career-related prose. For the full guide with voice examples, see config/profile/writing_style_guide.md — that file is the canonical source; this skill is the always-on enforcement layer.

Hard bans (non-negotiable)

These produce immediate rewrites. The agent's own examples in config/profile/writing_style_guide.md are not exempt — if a quoted example violates a rule, don't propagate it.

No em dashes (—). Ever. Replace with a comma, period, colon, or parentheses. Zero exceptions.
No hyphens as clause separators. "Built X - cut time by half" is banned. Use a period, comma, or restructure. Hyphens are fine inside hyphenated words (site-to-site, day-to-day) and as list bullets.
No "Happy to ..." phrasing. Recognized LLM tell. Replace with direct alternatives: "If you want to talk through this, I'm available." / "Let me know if you want to get on a call."
No AI-tell verbs: leveraged, leveraging, spearheaded, streamlined, streamlining, facilitated, facilitating, orchestrated (unless about container orchestration), championed, cultivated, synergized.
No generic AI filler: cutting-edge, cross-functional collaboration, proven track record, passionate about, results-driven, dynamic environment/team, stakeholder engagement, transformative impact, comprehensive suite, drive operational excellence, esteemed organization.
No AI cover-letter openers: "I am thrilled to ...", "I am eager to bring my expertise ...", "With a strong foundation in ...", "I am confident that my skills ..."

Voice rules

Plain verbs: built, wrote, set up, fixed, replaced, cut, eliminated, figured out, got it working.
Be specific: name the tool, service, and number. "Cut deployment from 153 hours to under 5" beats "significant time savings". "107 separate API calls" beats "many API calls".
Problem → Action → Result for bullets: what was broken/slow/missing, what you built/fixed, the measurable outcome.
Honest about scope. If something was small, don't inflate it. "A simple (less than 200 lines) script" is fine — owning the scope reads as credible, not as weak.
Vary sentence structure. Mix short declaratives with longer technical explanations. Don't follow the same cadence in every bullet.
Tenure references (cover letters, bios): round fractional years DOWN in 0.5 increments. Nimbus Technologies May 2022 – Jan 2026 = 3 years 8 months → "3.5 years", never "4 years".

Quick-check before returning content

Before handing back any drafted text, scan it for:

Any — character (em dash). Search and delete every one.
The literal string "Happy to" (case-insensitive). If present, rewrite the sentence.
The banned verbs and filler phrases above. If any appear, rewrite.
Bullets that don't follow problem → action → result. If a bullet has no problem context or no measurable result, ask whether it earns its space.

For resumes and cover letters specifically, the scripts/validate_resume_content.py and scripts/validate_cover_letter_content.py scripts enforce most of these rules as hard exit-code gates. Run them when generating those artifacts.

When NOT to apply

This skill is for prose Alex would put his name on. Don't apply to:

Internal config / YAML / CSV content (it's not prose).
Code comments and commit messages (different conventions).
Verbatim quotes from job postings, employer-supplied text, or third-party content.
Technical documentation drafts where formal tone is genuinely appropriate.

Writing Style (Digest)

Hard bans (non-negotiable)

These produce immediate rewrites. The agent's own examples in config/profile/writing_style_guide.md are not exempt — if a quoted example violates a rule, don't propagate it.

No em dashes (—). Ever. Replace with a comma, period, colon, or parentheses. Zero exceptions.

No hyphens as clause separators. "Built X - cut time by half" is banned. Use a period, comma, or restructure. Hyphens are fine inside hyphenated words (site-to-site, day-to-day) and as list bullets.

No "Happy to ..." phrasing. Recognized LLM tell. Replace with direct alternatives: "If you want to talk through this, I'm available." / "Let me know if you want to get on a call."

No AI-tell verbs: leveraged, leveraging, spearheaded, streamlined, streamlining, facilitated, facilitating, orchestrated (unless about container orchestration), championed, cultivated, synergized.

No generic AI filler: cutting-edge, cross-functional collaboration, proven track record, passionate about, results-driven, dynamic environment/team, stakeholder engagement, transformative impact, comprehensive suite, drive operational excellence, esteemed organization.

No AI cover-letter openers: "I am thrilled to ...", "I am eager to bring my expertise ...", "With a strong foundation in ...", "I am confident that my skills ..."

Voice rules

Plain verbs: built, wrote, set up, fixed, replaced, cut, eliminated, figured out, got it working.

Be specific: name the tool, service, and number. "Cut deployment from 153 hours to under 5" beats "significant time savings". "107 separate API calls" beats "many API calls".

Problem → Action → Result for bullets: what was broken/slow/missing, what you built/fixed, the measurable outcome.

Honest about scope. If something was small, don't inflate it. "A simple (less than 200 lines) script" is fine — owning the scope reads as credible, not as weak.

Vary sentence structure. Mix short declaratives with longer technical explanations. Don't follow the same cadence in every bullet.

Tenure references (cover letters, bios): round fractional years DOWN in 0.5 increments. Nimbus Technologies May 2022 – Jan 2026 = 3 years 8 months → "3.5 years", never "4 years".

Quick-check before returning content

Before handing back any drafted text, scan it for:

Any — character (em dash). Search and delete every one.

The literal string "Happy to" (case-insensitive). If present, rewrite the sentence.

The banned verbs and filler phrases above. If any appear, rewrite.

Bullets that don't follow problem → action → result. If a bullet has no problem context or no measurable result, ask whether it earns its space.

When NOT to apply

This skill is for prose Alex would put his name on. Don't apply to:

Internal config / YAML / CSV content (it's not prose).

Code comments and commit messages (different conventions).

Verbatim quotes from job postings, employer-supplied text, or third-party content.

Technical documentation drafts where formal tone is genuinely appropriate.