editorial-pass

name	editorial-pass
description	Multi-editor editorial pass over a draft (blog post, essay, README-as-prose) in YOUR voice — a mechanical AI-tell scan, six specialized editor lenses fanned out via the Workflow tool, an editor-in-chief consolidation with verbatim old/new fixes and a publish verdict, then must-fixes applied. Use when you say "editorial pass", "edit my draft", "run the panel on this", "de-AI this post", "does this sound like me", "voice pass", or invoke /editorial-pass <draft-path>. Grounded in a voice-profile doc you provide; pairs with /interview for sections that need raw material instead of editing.
argument-hint	<draft-path> — the near-ready draft; the voice profile is set via $VOICE_PROFILE
user_invocable	true

/editorial-pass — the six-lens panel + editor-in-chief

Turn a near-ready draft into a publish-verdict draft that sounds like you, not like a model. The pass has a subtractive half (kill the AI tells) and an additive half (inject your actual markers) — a draft is not done when it's merely clean.

Inputs

• DRAFT (required): path to the draft. From $ARGUMENTS or ask.
• VOICE PROFILE: a doc that captures your voice — the kill-list, the additive rule, the diction tables, and the drafting checklist that every lens and every rewrite is held to. Point $VOICE_PROFILE at it (e.g. ~/writing/voice-profile.md), or pass it explicitly. Read it FIRST, in full. If no profile exists yet, the mechanical scan and most lenses still run, but the additive half needs one — offer to draft a starter profile.
• CAVEATS (optional): facts the draft must keep honest (e.g. features described as in-progress that no edit may inflate into "shipped"). Ask if the draft discusses your own projects and no caveats were given.
• TARGET READER: ask if not stated; default = a smart reader who wants the piece to earn its length.

Step 1 — Mechanical tell-scan (before any model reads anything)

Run deterministic checks over the draft and record the results; they feed the voice lens and the editor-in-chief. Grep/count, don't eyeball:

1. Em-dashes: — anywhere → each is a finding.
2. Fingerprint watchlist frequency: count case-insensitive hits for quiet|quietly, genuinely, actually, honest|honestly, simply, deliberate|deliberately (plus any words added to profile kill-list #10). Any word >2 hits → finding listing every location; keep the single best.
3. Negation-correction shapes: regex for \bnot [^.]{3,40}[.,;] (it|this|that|we|I)('s| is| are|'re)?\b and It('s| is)n't [^.]*\. It('s| is)\b — approximations; the voice lens confirms.
4. Repeated sentence openers: flag any 2+ consecutive sentences sharing their first two words (anaphora candidates).
5. Triad density: count X, Y, and Z list constructions per section;

   1 per section → finding.

6. Sentence-length variance: compute per-paragraph mean/stdev of sentence word-counts; paragraphs where every sentence lands 18–30 words → rhythm finding (human paragraphs run ragged).

Step 2 — The panel (six lenses, background Workflow, two waves of three)

Fan out via the Workflow tool with a structured-output schema per editor (findings: location + verbatim problem snippet + concrete in-voice fix + severity). Two waves of three — a prior run got rate-limited firing all six at once; add retry/backoff on rate-limit errors. Every editor gets: the draft, the voice profile, the caveats, the target reader.

1. Developmental — theme, arc, does every section earn its place, hook ↔ close connection. (4–7 observations.)
2. Line — clarity, rhythm, wordiness; quote each problem sentence, give a tighter rewrite; keep the casual confident register, do not formalize. (5–10 edits.)
3. Copy — grammar, typos, tense, name/capitalization consistency, code-vs-prose mismatches, internal contradictions. (Every concrete error.)
4. Voice & AI-tells — the core lens, two halves: (a) subtractive: confirm/extend every Step-1 mechanical finding, hunt every kill-list tell (1–12), clean rewrite for each; (b) additive: score the draft against the profile's positive markers — pet phrases, hedges, self-deprecating aside, rhetorical-question beat, concrete numbers, "I" vs "we" usage. Missing markers are findings with a suggested insertion point, not vibes.
5. Credibility — where a skeptical senior engineer calls BS; overclaiming; verify every CAVEAT item is not overstated; hedging calibrated (honest, not mush).
6. Reader value — the single strongest takeaway and whether it lands; what's missing (a number, a worked example, a how-to-start); shareability. (4–6 prioritized.)

Step 3 — Elicitation-gap check (the /interview seam)

The best-sounding lines in any draft are lifted near-verbatim from you; synthesized connective tissue is where the AI register creeps in. For each section the panel flagged as voice-weak, ask: is there raw material behind it (interview answers, notes, chat quotes, friction-log lines)? If not, do NOT rewrite it into better synthesis — mark it an elicitation gap and surface 2–4 specific story-eliciting questions you should answer (offer to run /interview on them). Editing can't fix what was never yours to begin with.

Step 4 — Editor-in-chief

One consolidation agent reads the draft + profile + all six reports + the mechanical scan. It produces ONE de-duplicated, prioritized fix list:

• Per fix: EXACT verbatim old snippet (empty if pure addition) + new text + one-line reason + tag must / should / optional.
• Every new text: in-voice, clean of all 12 tells, respects the caveats.
• Conflicts between lenses: reconcile and make the call, one-line reason.
• Publish verdict: ready-to-publish / minor-fixes / needs-work, plus a one-paragraph theme assessment and the elicitation-gap list.

Step 5 — Apply and report

1. Apply the must fixes to the draft directly.
2. Re-run the Step-1 mechanical scan on the result — a fix that introduces a new tell is a bug; fix it before reporting.
3. Report back: verdict, what changed (grouped, not a wall), should/optional fixes awaiting a yes, elicitation gaps with their questions, and the mechanical before/after counts (e.g. "quietly 5→1, triads 9→4, em-dashes 0→0").

Rules

• The voice profile is the contract. When a lens's suggestion conflicts with it, the profile wins.
• Never inflate held-back/in-progress features into shipped ones — the credibility lens verifies this explicitly.
• Don't formalize. The failure mode of line editing is a smoother, more generic draft. When in doubt, rougher and more you.
• New tells you flag during review get appended to the profile's kill-list (with a date), so the list compounds.