mimesis-tone

name

mimesis-tone

description

Use when the user wants text written or recast in a specific named human voice: "make this sound like an expert / a practitioner", "make this warmer", "make this blunter / sharper", "make this more persuasive / sell this", "make this plainer / simpler", "give this a [tone] voice", "rewrite this in a [tone] tone". Five tones: persuasive, practitioner, warm, blunt, plain. Shapes voice while still removing AI tells and em dashes. Not for neutral de-slopping (that is mimesis-human) or pure shortening (mimesis-concise).

mimesis-tone

Domain A. Write or recast prose in a specific named human voice. Tone is which human voice; de-slopping is the separate job of not sounding like a machine. This skill does both: it shapes the voice and runs the same humanisation pass, so a tone never reintroduces a tell.

Pick the tone

From --tone, or detect from phrasing:

• persuasive ("sell this", "more persuasive", "landing-page copy")
• practitioner ("sound like an expert", "case study", "earned authority")
• warm ("warmer", "friendlier", "welcome email", "support reply")
• blunt ("blunter", "sharper", "more direct", "cut the hedging")
• plain ("plainer", "simpler", "clearer")

If the request names no tone and the right one is not obvious from the format, ask once rather than guessing.

How a run works

1. Read the relevant profile in reference/tones.md, plus reference/craft.md and reference/tells.md for the base humanisation. All on every run. When writing, also read reference/register.md: register (professional or casual grammar) is a separate axis from tone, resolved from --register or inferred per register.md. Every tone takes either register.

2. Detect the mode:

   • rewrite (default when text is supplied): recast existing text into the tone, meaning preserved. Never change a factual claim, never invent experience, numbers or quotes to fit the voice.
   • generate (when drafting from a brief): write new text already in the tone.
   • audit (when asked to assess): flag where the text misses the tone and where it carries tells, read-only.

3. Apply the tone's craft moves and avoid its slop twin. Remember the master key: every tone's authentic version is more specific than its imitation, so the strongest move is almost always to get concrete.

4. Run the linter on your output:

   python3 "$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/linter" --json <target>
   

   (Outside Claude Code, the linter is at <this-skill-dir>/../../linter.)

   Fix and re-run until clean of all non-advisory findings. An advisory finding (earned-word, low-burstiness, low-lexical-diversity) may stand only when you judge it earned, and you say so. The tone's own kill-list in tones.md goes beyond what the linter catches; apply that by hand.

5. Run the craft check from craft.md: rhythm, earned vocabulary, stance, register fit (this dimension checks the tone AND the register), specificity. Each pass or fail. On any fail, revise the failing dimensions only, re-lint, re-grade, maximum two loops. End the output with the one-line result.

The hard rules still hold

• Zero em dashes, in every tone.
• No fabricated specifics. The master key is specificity, but in rewrite mode you get specifics from the user or the source text, never by inventing them. A warm message with a made-up detail or a case study with an invented metric is worse than a vague one. If a tone needs a concrete number, name or quote you do not have, ask for it or leave a clearly marked placeholder.
• Tone shapes voice, not truth. Persuasive does not mean overstated, blunt does not mean cruel, warm does not mean dishonest.
• Never a typo. Casual register loosens grammar on purpose, per register.md; it never breaks spelling or forces an error.

Output

Return the recast text, then the one-line craft check result, and nothing else, unless the user asked what changed. If they did, add a short note: the tone applied, and the main moves (for example "swapped buzzwords for the specific mechanism, matched the awareness stage, cut the dutiful summary"). End on a clean linter pass and a reported craft check.

What this skill never does

• Fabricate a number, name, quote or experience to fit a voice.
• Reintroduce an em dash or kill-list word because a tone "wanted" it. The linter runs on every tone.
• Do neutral de-slopping with no target voice. That is /mimesis-human.
• Just shorten text. That is /mimesis-concise.
• Stack all five tones. Pick the dominant one; let at most one other adjust the edges.
• Introduce a typo, misspelling or forced grammatical error to look human.
• Report a humanity score. The craft check is pass/fail per dimension, one line.