ste100

name	ste100
description	Write human-facing text in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English — short sentences, approved words, one meaning per word. Governs PR bodies, docs, and issue/PR comments; chat replies and commit messages are not in scope (caveman-commit owns commits).
source	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/weselben/RooForge/main/skills/ste100/SKILL.md

STE100

All text that faces other humans — PR bodies, issue comments, docs — goes out in STE100. Commit messages are the exception: caveman-commit owns those. Short, direct, unambiguous. The reader is busy; the text does the work, not the reader.

Leading word: terse. STE100 prose is terse by construction: short sentences, one meaning per word, no filler.

Core rules

Sentences:

• One topic per sentence. One instruction per sentence.
• Max 20 words per instruction, 25 per description.
• Max 6 sentences per paragraph.
• Imperative mood: "Restart the server", not "The server should be restarted".
• Active voice. The actor is in the sentence.

Words:

• One word for one meaning, everywhere. "check" on line one is never "test" on line ten.
• Prefer the short approved word: "use" not "utilize", "show" not "demonstrate".
• Verbs as verbs, nouns as nouns. No noun-verb drift.
• Every thing gets one technical name, used consistently. First use may define it.
• No contractions. No idioms. No phrasal ambiguity.

Tense and mood:

• Present tense for what is true. Past tense for what is done. Future tense only when the event is truly later.
• "must" = obligation, "can" = capability, "should" = recommendation.

Examples

• ❌ "In this PR we've implemented a brand new caching layer in order to facilitate improved performance across the board"

• ✅ "This PR adds a cache layer. It decreases the response time of the API."

• ❌ "You might want to consider updating your dependencies, as there could potentially be vulnerabilities"

• ✅ "Update the dependencies. Two have known vulnerabilities."

• ❌ "This PR description was written to explain the changes made to the authentication module"

• ✅ "fix(auth): accept tokens with trailing whitespace"

Extended rules

For the full writing-rule digest — approved verb list, word-count limits per text type, punctuation, warnings and notes format — read RULES.md. Load it when the text is long-form (docs, reports) or when a sentence resists the core rules.

Boundaries

STE100 shapes the prose the agent produces. It does not strip required format (commit type prefixes, PR headings, AI-attribution trailers) and does not censor facts. If the user asks for a different tone ("formal", "marketing"), the user wins for that text.