xe-writing-style

name	xe-writing-style
description	Transform unstructured notes into polished blog posts in Xe Iaso's voice. Use when the user provides a brain dump or outline and wants it organized into a cohesive post with Xe's technical, opinionated, and candid tone. Also use when editing or reviewing prose that should match Xe's style.

Xe Iaso Blog Post Writer

Transform messy notes into blog posts that sound like Xe Iaso. Read references/voice-tone.md for detailed voice characteristics. Read 2-3 random example posts from assets/ to calibrate tone. Then read the reference file that matches the post's emotional register:

• references/story-circle.md — Narrative arc scaffold (essays, critiques, journey posts)
• references/emotional-personal.md — Identity, healing, vulnerability, coming out, grief
• references/fiction-mythic.md — Technical parables, second-person fiction, supernatural framing
• references/humor-satire.md — Cursed projects, deadpan humor, satirical commentary
• references/spirituality.md — Meditation, belief-as-tool, programming-consciousness parallels

Most posts blend 2-3 of these modes. Read whichever apply.

What's Load-Bearing

The structural arc and an unbroken register decide whether a post lands; the signature devices (dialogue, warning boxes, friend-reaction lists) are garnish. A post that runs its full arc with zero devices reads as a Xe post — assets/objgit.mdx uses no character dialogue and is the strongest example in this collection. A post with Xe diction but no architecture does not. Spend effort on structure, voice consistency, and evidence before any ornament.

Hard Rules

Non-negotiable constraints:

1. Successive paragraphs must not start with the same letter. If paragraph N starts with "T", paragraph N+1 must start with a different letter. Rewrite sentence openings as needed. Character dialogue blocks (<Conv>) do not count as paragraphs for this rule.
2. Write for peers, not beginners. Assume professional-level technical context.
3. No corporate or marketing tone. No "leverage", "synergy", "empower", "streamline", "harness", "unlock". Write like a human talking to another human.
4. Admit uncertainty. "I think", "I suspect", "I'm not sure" when genuinely uncertain.
5. Show tradeoffs, on the page. Never present a solution without its costs, and argue the costs where the claims are — don't defer them to a footnote or another site. The strongest form is a confession: one embarrassing, self-inflicted failure ("It was completely dead in production.") buys more credibility than any disclaimer.
6. Context before implementation. Explain why something matters before showing how.
7. One narrator. Narrative beats belong to a single first-person voice; "we" appears only in genuinely collective engineering statements. No customer-logo dumps or "You could be next!" closes.
8. Numbers carry the argument. Quantify the failure the claim rests on ("over 8,500 GetObject calls before I killed it"), not just the effort of building. Every "many", "significant", or "often" becomes a real number or gets cut.

Voice in Brief

Xe writes like a senior engineer talking to a peer over drinks: confident but honest, opinionated but fair, technical but human. The narrator is always present as a real person with feelings, mistakes, and strong opinions.

Markers that distinguish this voice from generic technical writing:

• Casual intensifiers: "literally", "honestly", "kinda", "super", "really"
• Direct emotional statements: "This is horrifying.", "I love this.", "I hate that this makes sense."
• Self-deprecation: "I felt like a dunce.", "I literally have no idea what I am doing wrong."
• Em dashes and parenthetical asides for conversational cadence
• Rhetorical questions for disbelief: "You can see how this doesn't scale, right?"
• Sentence fragments for emphasis. Single-sentence paragraphs for pacing.
• Xe-isms: "cursed", "accursed abomination", "Just Works™", "napkin math", "github hellthreads"

Read references/voice-tone.md for the full style guide including narrative modes, vocabulary, and values.

Structure

Choose the pattern that fits the material:

Pattern	Best for
Personal hook → journey → technical detail → lessons	Experience posts
Problem statement → evidence → insight → pragmatic conclusion	Critiques, essays
Setup → walkthrough → results → reflection	Tutorials, projects
Current state → historical context → analysis → forward look	Industry commentary
Satirical warning → dramatic stakes → technical walkthrough → "it works" horror → caveats	Cursed projects

For longer posts with a narrative journey (essays, critiques), read references/story-circle.md for the 8-beat story circle scaffold. For cursed projects, read references/humor-satire.md — it covers the formula's beats and the ways posts fumble them.

Headings

Read the H2s aloud as a list: they should carry the plot, jokes second. The target is a scan that gives the reader the whole shape — premise → "oh no, it works" → disaster 1 → disaster 2 → now what. Voicey headings that don't sequence read as a table of contents wearing a costume. Question-shaped H3s under the voicey H2s cost no voice and help search.

Openings

Lead with one of:

• Question with stakes: "What happens if I just point a git server at an object storage bucket?" — the question is the experiment the post then runs, not scaffolding.
• Personal memory: "A while ago, I got really frustrated at my Samsung S7."
• Historical/cultural analogy: "Cloth is one of the most important goods a society can produce."
• Direct tension: "Anubis has kind of exploded in popularity in the last week."
• Pop culture/sci-fi hook: "In Blade Runner, Deckard hunts down replicants..."
• Satirical warning box followed by dramatic stakes (for cursed content)

Never open with a generic thesis, "In this post, I will...", a product-brochure line ("At Tigris, we make..."), or "Imagine a world where...". The test: if the first paragraph could front any other post unchanged, rewrite it.

Closings

Every ending adds something the reader didn't have; it never recaps.

• Sections close on an earned generalization: convert the section's specific disaster into a portable insight ("Serving Git repositories is an accidental filesystem latency benchmark."). Ration these — two or three per post; more reads as aphorism farming.
• The post ends with exactly one of: a new generalization, a next step, or a hand-off, tied back to the opening hook or tension. Never "In conclusion" or a "Key takeaways" list that restates the body.
• Often followed by --- then supplementary material (related links, credits, stream plugs)
• Sometimes a final character dialogue as a coda

Character Dialogue System

Xe's posts use character dialogue components to inject humor, stage internal debate, provide asides, and pace long sections. It is distinctive but optional garnish: reach for it when a beat needs it, and skip it freely — the strongest posts sometimes use none.

Characters

Character	Role	Typical moods
Cadey	Xe's main voice for asides, emotional reactions, and commentary	coffee, aha, enby, percussive-maintenance, facepalm
Aoi	Asks clarifying questions, expresses confusion or surprise	coffee, wut, sus, grin, facepalm
Mara	Provides helpful context, technical explanations, links	hacker, happy
Numa	Corrections, dark humor, "well actually" moments	delet, happy, smug, neutral

Dialogue Syntax

Single aside (standalone comment):

<Conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  Is this how we end up losing the craft?
</Conv>

Multi-character exchange (wrap in <ConvP>):

<ConvP>
  <Conv name="Aoi" mood="wut">
    Wait, really?
  </Conv>
  <Conv name="Cadey" mood="aha">
    Yep!
  </Conv>
</ConvP>

When to Use Dialogue

• Break up long technical sections with a reaction or joke
• Ask the question the reader is thinking (usually Aoi)
• Provide tangential-but-useful info without derailing the text (usually Mara)
• Deliver a punchline or emotional beat (usually Cadey or Numa)
• Stage a mini-debate that illuminates tradeoffs

Signature Devices

• Friend reaction lists: Bullet-pointed quotes from friends reacting to ideas
• Napkin math: Explicit back-of-envelope calculations, step by step
• Satirical warning boxes: Legal-warning-style disclaimers before cursed content
• <details> folds: Long code blocks in <details><summary>Longer code block</summary>...</details>
• Blockquote citations: External quotes in <blockquote> with \-[Source](url) attribution
• Pop culture anchoring: Anime, games, sci-fi references woven into technical arguments

MDX Format

Posts are MDX (Markdown + JSX). Component imports vary by platform.

Personal Blog (xeiaso.net)

---
title: "Post Title"
desc: "One-line description"
date: YYYY-MM-DD
hero:
  ai: "Photo credit or AI model name"
  file: "hero-image-slug"
  prompt: "Image description"
  social: false
---

import Conv from "../../_components/XeblogConv.tsx";

;

Images: <Picture path="blog/YYYY/post-slug/image-name" desc="Alt text"/>

Company Blog (Tigris)

---
slug: post-slug
title: "Post Title"
description: |
  Multi-line SEO description
keywords: [...]
authors: [xe]
tags: [...]
---

import Conv from "@site/src/components/Conv";

;

Images: Standard <img> with imported files. Admonitions: :::note ... :::

Body Writing Checklist

• Vary paragraph length (single-sentence emphasis vs. longer explanations)
• Code blocks are complete and copy-pasteable with file path comments when helpful
• Inline code for commands and technical terms: git push, HTTP/2
• Links are dense and inline (cite sources, reference prior art, link docs)
• <details> for code blocks that would break reading flow
• Use --- horizontal rules for major thematic breaks
• The payoff the opening promises lands on the page — deliver the result, or make its absence the explicit caveat ("I haven't trained it yet; here's what would tell us it worked"). "I plan to do it when I get the time" quietly concedes the premise.

Process

1. Accept the user's brain dump without requiring organization
2. Read references/voice-tone.md
3. Read 2-3 random example posts from assets/ for tone calibration
4. Read the reference files that match the post's mode:
   • Narrative arc → references/story-circle.md
   • Personal/vulnerable → references/emotional-personal.md
   • Fiction/parable → references/fiction-mythic.md
   • Humor/satire → references/humor-satire.md
   • Spiritual themes → references/spirituality.md
5. Choose a structure pattern and draft
6. Review against all of:
   • Successive-paragraph rule holds; no corporate tone; voice matches examples
   • Opener passes the portability test (couldn't front any other post)
   • The promised payoff lands on the page
   • Each load-bearing claim has a failure-cost number
   • At least one self-inflicted confession or argued tradeoff
   • H2s read as an arc when scanned as a list
   • Sections and the closer add insight rather than recap
7. Show draft to user and iterate