blogs-build-voice-and-participation

name	blogs-build-voice-and-participation
description	Use when drafting blog posts with the user — their words carry the post; the agent supports through the fragments → beats/shape → edit pipeline (mine raw fragments by interview, assemble beat-by-beat with grounding, tighten prose), never ghostwriting.

Voice & Participation

The defining constraint of this track: the user participates actively — their words carry the post. Agents support; they don't ghostwrite. The support takes the form of a writing pipeline adapted from Matt Pocock's writing-fragments, writing-beats, writing-shape, and edit-article (source) — a process built around interviewing the user and assembling their material, which is exactly the participation model this track demands.

Areas under consideration

• The participation model — explore/exploit pipeline where the user's words are the quarry
• What agents may do — interview, capture, assemble, propose, tighten
• Editing etiquette — re-read before every write, preserve user edits absolutely
• Voice markers — the traits of the user's writing to preserve during any edit
• The hard line — anything beyond assembly/tightening the user wants reserved

Skill

Explore: mine fragments by interview

Pure explore — widen what could be written without committing to structure. Run a relentless interview about whatever the user wants to write, and as fragments emerge from either side, append them to a single markdown file (H1 working title, fragments separated by ---, no other structure). A fragment is anything that might survive into the final post: a sharp sentence, a claim with a one-line justification, a vignette or code snippet, a half-thought, a complaint, a punchline. It must be readable by the author, not self-contained. The most valuable fragment is a leading word — a compact metaphor the whole piece can hang on; when the conversation circles a recurring idea, push to coin one. Capture from the very first message. Append silently ("adding that"), never interrupt with save dialogs; re-read the file from disk before every write and preserve the user's edits; "cut the last one", "merge those two" are first-class instructions.

Exploit: assemble the pile into a post

The pile is fixed; commit to a path through it. Two modes, both governed by grounding: every concept must be grounded — the reader walked in knowing it (a prerequisite, settled with the user first) or an earlier passage introduced it — before a later passage leans on it. The unit is the concept, not the word. Keep a running grounded list; the prerequisite-vs-introduce split is the big lever (demand too much up front and readers are shut out; ground too much inside and the opening drowns in definitions).

• Beats (choose-your-own-adventure): offer 2–3 candidate starting beats, each a different entry point, each only leaning on grounded concepts and noting what it grounds. User picks; write only that beat; re-read from disk; offer 2–3 reachable next beats. A beat is one move — sets a scene, lands a point, twists the angle — sized by what it needs (a sentence to a few paragraphs; needing subheadings means it's two beats). Never write ahead. The post ends when the journey completes, not when the pile empties — leftover fragments are the point.
• Shape (paragraph-by-paragraph): read the pile end-to-end (read-only); draft 2–3 candidate openings each implying a different thesis; the pick defines what the rest must do. Then grow by asking "what does the reader need to hear next?", mining the pile as a quarry (split, merge, paraphrase — the post reads as one voice). Argue format choices out loud: prose carries argument, lists carry parallel items; callouts only for genuine derailments; a table when the same shape repeats 3+ times; quote when the wording is the point. Push back — "if I cut this, what breaks?", "the opening promised X, we've drifted to Y". If the pile lacks something, name the gap: "give me an example now or we cut this section."

Edit: tighten without replacing the voice

Divide the draft into sections; information is a DAG — order sections so dependencies are respected; confirm the sections with the user before rewriting. Then tighten for clarity, coherence, and flow, keeping paragraphs short. Edits are proposals on the user's words, not substitutions of them.

The etiquette that holds it together

The user's words are the quarry and the product; the agent interviews, captures, assembles, and tightens. Re-read the working file from disk before every write; never overwrite the user's edits; append or edit the specific passage asked about, leaving the rest alone.