essay

name	essay
description	Draft, review, and revise short-form voice-grounded essays and blog posts (markdown body, 500–1500 words typical) through the canonical anvil lifecycle. Ends at READY with a documented publish handoff; site deploys stay consumer-native.
domain	essay
type	skill
user-invocable	false

anvil:essay — Short-form voice-grounded essays and blog posts

The essay skill produces short-form personal/professional essays and blog posts (markdown body, 500–1500 words typical) through the canonical anvil lifecycle: draft → review → revise, with revise looping to review until the rubric threshold is met or the iteration cap is reached. The artifact class is grounded in the rjwalters.info adoption survey (issue #460): its native blog skill is a pre-anvil descendant of paper (same versioned-dir grammar, older generation — monolithic review.md, 6-dim /30 rubric, single critic, no stamping). Anvil's loop strictly upgrades the machinery; no prior skill fit the artifact — anvil:memo is decision-oriented, anvil:paper is venue-pinned long-form.

What makes the class distinct is voice: the artifact succeeds or fails on whether it sounds like its author. The skill is therefore the first heavy consumer of the voice/persona grounding-docs contract (issue #461, anvil/lib/snippets/voice_grounding.md): where memo attaches voice as a calibration suffix on its dim 8, essay OWNS voice fidelity as rubric dim 2 — the #461-sanctioned "attach to an owned dimension" shape. The essay rubric consumes that contract; it does not redefine it.

Artifact contract

An essay thread is a single essay or blog post authored across one or more revisions, identified by a slug (e.g., can-claude-read-the-room, the-loop-is-the-unit). Each thread lives inside a project root carrying a project-level BRIEF.md (the post-#295/#296 canonical model); the body markdown inside each version directory echoes the slug (<slug>.md — NOT the surveyed consumer's post.md):

<project>/                     Project root
  BRIEF.md                     Project-level brief (frontmatter `documents:` list +
                               optional top-level `voice:` block per issue #461)
  STYLE_GUIDE.md, VALUES.md,   Typical voice docs (any paths; declared via the
  VOCABULARY.md, corpus glob   BRIEF's `voice:` block — see §Voice grounding)
  research/                    Optional shared evidence pool
  <thread>/                    Thread directory (named for the slug)
    refs/                      Optional reference material (sources, transcripts)
    <thread>.1/                First drafted version (immutable once written)
      <thread>.md              Essay body (filename echoes the slug per #295)
      _progress.json           Phase state for this version
      changelog.md             (revisions only) Maps prior critic notes to changes
    <thread>.1.review/         Reviewer sibling (read-only once written)
      verdict.md               Advance / block + total /44 + critical flags
      scoring.md               Per-dimension scores against rubric.md
      comments.md              Line-level comments keyed to the body markdown
      _summary.md              Machine-readable summary blocks (voice_grounding, …)
      _gate.json               Deterministic pre-flight gate record (see §Gates)
      _meta.json               human-verdict scorecard kind + #346 rubric stamps
      _progress.json           Phase state for the reviewer
    <thread>.1.numeric/        Numeric-consistency gate sidecar (written by the
      _review.json             reviewer's pre-flight via anvil/lib/numeric_consistency)
    <thread>.1.hyperlinks/     Hyperlink-resolver gate sidecar (written by the
      _review.json             reviewer's pre-flight via anvil/lib/hyperlink_resolver)
    <thread>.2/                Revised version (consumes v1 + ALL critic siblings)
    ...
    <thread>.{N}/              Terminal version, marked READY in its _progress.json

Versioned dirs (<thread>.{N}/) and critic sibling dirs (<thread>.{N}.<critic>/) are immutable once their _progress.json records the phase as done. Revisions are produced as a new version dir, never by editing in place.

Markdown-only body (v1). There is no PDF render path: the publish target is the consumer's site (TSX), not PDF. anvil:project-share treats essay threads as source-only (acceptable; deferred). The body filename is <slug>.md per the post-#296 canonical model — migration of the consumer's post.md corpus is a tracked follow-up via anvil:project-migrate + anvil:rubric-rebackport once this skill ships.

Voice grounding (dim 2 — owned)

The skill consumes the issue #461 contract (anvil/lib/snippets/voice_grounding.md) directly:

• The project BRIEF's optional top-level voice: block declares up to four voice artifacts (values / style_guide / vocabulary / corpus glob), resolved via anvil/lib/project_brief.py::resolve_voice_docs(project_dir) — project root first, then consumer root.
• Active tier: the drafter loads values → style_guide → vocabulary → corpus exemplars, picks 3–5 voice-matched + topically adjacent exemplars, and records them in _progress.json.metadata.voice_exemplars. The reviewer scores dim 2 (Voice fidelity) against the resolved docs; every voice deduction MUST quote a corpus exemplar showing what the target voice sounds like, and the convergence-with-Claude adversarial check applies (would I, the AI, also write this sentence? — if yes, scrutinize harder, never defend). The reviewer's _summary.md carries the voice_grounding block.
• No voice: block → dim 2 scores WITHOUT calibration AND essay-review records a major finding recommending the block. Voice is the point of this artifact class, so an absent contract is a defect to surface — not a crash and not a silent pass (the customer_context.py posture). This deliberately differs from memo (where an absent block is byte-identical silence): essay's review is still produced, the thread still converges, but the gap is named every pass until the operator declares the contract.
• Empty block (voice: {}) → inactive, byte-identical to absent (same major finding applies — an empty declaration is no contract).
• Declared-but-missing file → the tier ACTIVATES; the breakage surfaces as a major finding directing the operator to create or fix the file (resolve_voice_docs carries missing: true entries; never raises).
• The reviser preserves voice signatures the reviewer flagged as working — voice-grounded revision must not sand off the persona while chasing rubric points.

The voice.rhetoric_rules sub-key (consumer-tunable lint rules, #463's documented integration point) is wired (issue #479, porting the memo-render step 4g contract from #468): essay-review step 3c resolves it via anvil/lib/project_brief.py::resolve_rhetoric_rules(project_dir) and forwards the path to lint_rhetoric(extra_rules_path=...) — the direct-call kwarg, not the gate's rhetoric_rules_path=. A declared-but-missing file is still forwarded so the loader's graceful-degrade surfaces the broken declaration as a warning finding; the advisory severity ceiling is untouched.

State machine

Per-thread state, derived from on-disk evidence (not flags):

EMPTY → DRAFTED → REVIEWED → REVISED → … → READY

State	Evidence
EMPTY	No <thread>.{N}/ directories exist
DRAFTED	Latest <thread>.{N}/ exists with <thread>.md (slug-echo per #295) and _progress.json.draft == done; no sibling review at the same N
REVIEWED	<thread>.{N}.review/verdict.md exists for the latest N
REVISED	A <thread>.{N+1}/ exists after a prior <thread>.{N}.review/
READY	Latest <thread>.{N}.review/verdict.md records advance: true AND no unresolved critical flag

Thresholds: ≥35/44 advances (general tier — personal/professional voice writing, not the customer-facing ≥39 band; the surveyed consumer's 24/30 gate = 80%, and 35/44 ≈ 80% — same bar). Any critical flag short-circuits regardless of total — block until addressed. Iteration cap: default max_iterations: 4; consumer overrides via the project-BRIEF paired override (max_iterations + iteration_cap_rationale, the #349 memo contract). Exceeding the cap marks the thread BLOCKED (human review).

There is no AUDITED state and no figures phase in v1. The artifact is 500–1500-word markdown prose; the surveyed 8-thread corpus contains no figures. The command set is deliberately draft / review / revise / status only.

Publish handoff contract

The skill ends at READY. Publishing — the consumer's TSX conversion, post-registry updates, Cloudflare deploy — stays consumer-native, exactly as anvil:report's CUSTOMER-READY precedent keeps customer delivery outside the framework. What the handoff guarantees to the consumer's publish tooling:

1. A .latest-resolvable body: <thread>/<thread>.{N}/<thread>.md for the highest N (or via a consumer-maintained <thread>.latest symlink per anvil/lib/snippets/version_layout.md); resolution semantics per anvil/lib/latest_resolution.py::resolve_latest.
2. A READY verdict on that version: <thread>.{N}.review/verdict.md records advance: true, total ≥35/44, zero unresolved critical flags — including the convergence-blocking gates below (no unresolved numeric-consistency failure, no broken internal/cross-thread link, no example-coherence flag).
3. Stamped review metadata: <thread>.{N}.review/_meta.json carries scorecard_kind: "human-verdict" plus the #346 stamps (rubric_id: "anvil-essay-v1", rubric_total: 44, advance_threshold: 35), so downstream tooling can verify WHICH rubric blessed the version without re-reading this skill.

Anything past that boundary (front-matter injection for the site generator, image asset pipelines, deploy) is out of scope by design. A consumer wanting a publish command writes it natively against this contract.

Gates — blocking vs advisory

Deterministic pre-flight fires before the expensive content review (the framework-wide "deterministic pre-flight before judgment" pattern). The reviewer records every gate outcome in <thread>.{N}.review/_gate.json and the blocking outcomes feed the verdict:

Gate	Mode	Mechanism
Numeric consistency	BLOCKING	uv run --project .anvil python -m anvil.lib.numeric_consistency <version_dir> --write-review --blocking (issue #462's hook, built for this skill). One CriticalFlag per finding-code cluster forces Verdict.BLOCK through critics.compute_verdict. The detector is the deterministic extraction assist UNDER the full claim-vs-claim semantic LLM pass in essay-review (the blog-review step-2.6 port).
Link audit (deterministic half)	BLOCKING for broken/unresolvable links	the promoted anvil/lib/hyperlink_resolver.py (--write-review; this skill is the second consumer that triggered the #335 module's promotion from the memo skill-local lib). Unresolved cross-thread refs raise the critical_broken_cross_thread_anchor flag; broken internal links are major findings essay-review escalates to blocking when unresolved at verdict time. The judgment half ("a named entity needs a link", step-2.7) is essay-review prose → major, never critical.
Rhetoric lint	Advisory	anvil/lib/rhetoric_lint.py::lint_rhetoric per its fixed #463 warning-ceiling contract. Findings feed dim 9 (Rhetorical economy) scoring as deterministic evidence and assist the generic-AI-cadence critical flag, which remains LLM judgment. Severities are never escalated — irreducible false positives (quoted material, deliberate style) make the judgment call the reviewer's.
Example coherence	BLOCKING via LLM critical flag	the blog-review step-2.5 prose check carried directly in essay-review (quote the framing sentence + the worked example; state what the example actually needs). No detector — deferred per the #462 gate-1 record until a second observed production failure.

Failure-mode catalog (why the gates exist)

• The toaster failure (example coherence). Consumer post 2026-05-26-toaster-wants-to-be-good v1–v3 framed a wall-powered, 800-watt-heating-element toaster as gated by per-token inference energy, when its actual gate is cost-of-silicon. The error survived three review passes because the rubric scored craft and no pass asked whether the central example physically needs what the framing claims. Essay-review's example-coherence pass exists because of this failure; it blocks convergence regardless of rubric score.
• The spread failure (numeric consistency). Consumer post 2026-05-27-the-loop-is-the-unit v1 named three finishers at 70 / 56 / 54, then claimed a "70-point spread" (the raw top score leaked into the spread slot) and "sixteen points ahead" (the named gap is 14). The spread error survived to production. The deterministic gate catches the arithmetic shapes; the LLM pass catches the semantic remainder (same quantity stated twice disagreeing, etc.).

Command dispatch

Command	Role	Reads	Writes
essay	portfolio/status orchestrator (read-only)	all <thread>.* dirs under cwd	(none; reports state per thread + recommends next command)
essay-draft <thread>	drafter	project BRIEF.md (+ voice: docs), <thread>/refs/, shared research/; for revisions also prior version + critic siblings	<thread>.{N}/<thread>.md + _progress.json
essay-review <thread>	reviewer (single critic + deterministic gates)	latest <thread>.{N}/, voice docs, rubric.md	<thread>.{N}.review/ (+ the .numeric/ and .hyperlinks/ gate sidecars via their CLIs)
essay-revise <thread>	reviser	latest <thread>.{N}/ + <thread>.{N}.review/ + gate sidecars + any optional critic siblings	<thread>.{N+1}/ with changelog.md, or reports READY

Rubric

See rubric.md for the 9-dimension /44 schema (anvil-essay-v1), the ≥35 advance threshold, the voice-dominant weighting (dim 2 Voice fidelity at weight 7 — the inverse of memo's substance-dominant tilt), the load-bearing dim 9 (Rhetorical economy absorbs the consumer rubric's length discipline and is fed by the rhetoric lint), and the seven critical flags ported from the consumer's blog-review: anti-stance violation, out-of-standing claim, generic AI cadence, factual error, unattributed borrowing, example-coherence failure, numeric-consistency failure.

Every critic-writing pass stamps _meta.json with scorecard_kind: "human-verdict", rubric_id: "anvil-essay-v1", rubric_total: 44, advance_threshold: 35 (per-review version stamping, issue #346) and writes its sidecar atomically via anvil/lib/sidecar.py::staged_sidecar + the per-critic cleanup_one_staging sweep (issues #350/#376).

Project BRIEF artifact type

essay is registered as a skill-identity artifact_type value in the shared project-BRIEF registry (anvil/lib/project_brief.py::REGISTERED_ARTIFACT_TYPES / SKILL_IDENTITY_ARTIFACT_TYPES; issue #460, following the #386/#408/#432/#440 pattern). In a shared project BRIEF, a documents: entry with artifact_type: essay declares that this skill owns the thread. It is NOT a memo subtype: it selects no memo rubric overlay, and memo commands fail loudly when pointed at a thread declaring it.

Deferred (tracked follow-ups; deliberately NOT in v1)

• rjwalters.info drafts/ migration — 8 threads / ~22 version dirs of anvil-adjacent foreign grammar (post.md body, monolithic review.md, /30 rubric); needs anvil:project-migrate enrollment + anvil:rubric-rebackport stamping once this skill exists.
• PDF render path — the publish target is TSX, not PDF.
• Example-coherence detector — deferred per #462 gate 1 until a second observed failure; the LLM prose check carries it.
• Audit / figures commands — no current need for the artifact class; the state machine ends at READY.

Defaults and overrides

Consumers extend via .anvil/skills/essay/ in their own repo:

• rubric.overrides.md (optional) — additive critical-flag examples; cannot reduce the base rubric.
• Voice docs are NOT skill-local config — they are project/persona artifacts declared via the BRIEF's voice: block (see §Voice grounding).

Git sync hook (opt-in, off by default)

Consumers running anvil under an external orchestrator can opt in to a per-phase git commit hook so every lifecycle phase leaves the working tree clean: a repo-level .anvil/config.json with git.commit_per_phase: true (and optionally git.push: true) has each write-bearing essay command end its phase by staging only the dirs it wrote and committing as anvil(essay/<phase>): <thread>.{N} [<state>]. The full contract — knob shape, defaults-off rule, commit-message format, staging scope, warn-and-continue failure semantics, and ordering after the _progress.json done write and the #350 sidecar atomic rename — lives in anvil/lib/snippets/git_sync.md (.anvil/anvil/lib/snippets/git_sync.md in an installed consumer repo). All 3 write-bearing essay commands adopt it; the read-only essay portfolio orchestrator is exempt by definition. When .anvil/config.json is absent or the knob is false, behavior is byte-identical — the hook is default off.