write-as-friend

name	write-as-friend
description	Draft casual messages — Discord, Slack, text, informal email — in the user's own voice, as plain text with no markdown.
disable-model-invocation	true

Write as Friend

Casual counterpart to write-as-human. Same goal — prose that doesn't read as AI — but for messages sent to a person, not documents published to readers.

Read write-as-human first. Every tell in it still applies. This skill covers what changes in casual register, and does not repeat that list.

Usage: /write-as-friend [medium] <what to say> — e.g. /write-as-friend discord tell manuel the notes feature is in staging.

What changes

Formal AI writing gets caught on ornate vocabulary. Casual AI writing gets caught on effort — it's too complete, too balanced, too eager. A friend firing off a message doesn't hedge both sides, doesn't recap what you already know, and doesn't land a warm closing line.

Casual AI tell	What a person does
"Hey! Just wanted to reach out about..."	Says the thing. "hey — screening room links went out yesterday"
Forced enthusiasm: "Awesome!", "Love this!", "Super excited"	Neutral by default. Enthusiasm only where it's real, once
Performed casualness: "haha", "lol", tacked-on emoji	Only if that's genuinely how the user writes to this person
Complete sentences, every time	Fragments are fine. "should be good by fri"
Recapping context the recipient already has	Assume shared context. They were there
Balanced both-sides hedging	Pick a side. It's a message, not a memo
A closing line that wraps things up	Just stop. Or "lmk"
Em dashes and semicolons	Comma, period, or a new line

Mechanics

• Plain text only. No markdown. No **bold**, no # headings, no - bullet lists in prose. If something genuinely needs a list, use plain lines or "1." "2.".
• Loose capitalization is fine — lowercase sentence starts, lowercase "i". Match how the user writes. Proper nouns and names stay capitalized; it should read relaxed, not broken.
• No hard line wrapping. One line per paragraph. Break only where a break is meant. Line breaks get mangled when pasted anywhere else.
• Contractions always. "it's", "won't", "I'd".
• Short. A casual message that runs long stops being casual. If it needs to be long, it's an email — say so.

Medium

The optional first argument tunes format. If it's absent, don't ask — write generic casual plain text: no greeting, no signoff, short paragraphs, safe to paste anywhere. Only ask when the answer would genuinely change the output — the message is running long enough that discord-vs-email changes its shape, or it clearly needs either a greeting or a code block and the medium decides which.

discord / slack — Short. Blank lines instead of paragraphs. Code goes in a fenced block (the one markdown exception; both render it). Slack uses *single asterisks* for bold, so avoid bold in Slack entirely rather than getting it wrong. No greeting, no signoff. Long content gets split at a natural break, and you say where the split is.

text / sms / imessage — Shortest. One thought. No greeting, no signoff, no links unless asked. If it takes more than about three lines, suggest a call instead.

email — Informal but still email. A greeting ("Hey Nicole,"), real paragraphs, and a signoff ("Thanks," / "— Tyler"). Subject line offered separately, not inside the body. This is the one medium where full sentences and normal capitalization stay.

dm / other — Treat as Discord unless the user says otherwise.

Output

If scratch-out.txt exists in the project, append it there under a ## <YYYY-MM-DD> — <who/what> heading so the user can copy it out — see the scratch skill. Otherwise print it in the reply.

Either way, output the message and nothing else. No "here's a draft", no explanation of the choices, no offer to adjust the tone. If something is genuinely ambiguous, ask before writing rather than shipping a caveat after it.

Common mistakes

• Applying the formal register in lowercase. Same sentence shapes, different capitalization, still reads as AI.
• Blocking on the medium question. No medium given means generic casual, not an interrogation.
• Over-friendly opener. "Hope you're doing well!" is the loudest tell in the list.
• Explaining the message after writing it. Send the message.
• Markdown leaking in. Bullets and bold are the giveaway that a machine wrote it.
• Using the medium's slang because it's that medium. Discord doesn't require "gg".