Guideline writing

Guideline Writing

Craft for authoring the instruction layer itself — the .claude/ guide SoTs, CLAUDE.md, and plan files. Content pages have the four content-craft skills (jrn·con·enc·cit); this skill is their counterpart for the meta layer. Dotted IDs: gdl.* (criteria.json); the deterministic detectors live in checks.py and run inside python tools/lint.py meta.

Operative Rule vs Recital

Every sentence in a guideline is one of two kinds, and only the first belongs in the body:

• Operative rule — tells the reader what to do, when, and how to tell they did it right. Test: delete the sentence; if an executor could now act differently and still believe they complied, the sentence was operative.
• Recital — explains how the rule came to be: options weighed, benchmarks absorbed, incidents survived, dates adopted. Recitals are history; history's SoT is log.md (append-only). A recital in the body is deliberation narrative — the central antipattern this skill exists to prevent.

A failure mode earns at most one line in the body — the concrete trigger the rule guards against, stated as a present-tense condition ("a partial edit bumps only the date and masks body staleness"), never as a war story ("after the 05-20 incident we decided…"). The story goes to log.md.

Force Tiers — MUST / SHOULD / MAY

State every rule at exactly one force tier, and make the tier visible in the wording:

Tier	Wording	Reader's obligation	Verification
MUST	"is mandatory" · "never" · imperative	no discretion; violating it is a defect	lint-gate or blocking hook where possible
SHOULD	"by default" · "prefer" · "unless"	may deviate with a stated reason	advisory hook · review lens
MAY	"can" · "optionally"	pure permission	none

Antipattern: hedged MUSTs ("should generally always…") and decorated MAYs ("it is strongly recommended to consider…"). If you cannot pick the tier, you have not finished deciding the rule — finish deciding before writing.

Pruning

A guideline corpus only stays executable if rules leave at the same rate reality invalidates them:

• Prune-or-enforce: a rule that is neither checked (lint·hook·review lens) nor followed is dead weight — either wire an enforcement surface or delete it. Keeping it "as documentation" is the recital antipattern wearing a rule's clothes.
• Deprecation signal: a detector or lens with 0 surfacings across 5 consecutive batches is a deletion candidate (mirrors the desk promotion loop's burn criteria).
• Delete whole units: prune at the bullet/section level, not by shaving words — a half-pruned rule reads as a weaker rule, not a shorter one.

Bloat Control

Absorb into an existing section, table, or matrix by default; create something new only after proving no matching pattern exists.

5-step self-check (mandatory just before finishing a guideline or plan edit):

1. New section/table/matrix vs a one-line absorption into an existing section — absorb by default
2. Zero copies of another SoT's table/matrix — replace with a cross-reference
3. Zero new Risk/invariant/caveat sections by default — prefer attaching a qualifier to an existing section
4. When the changed lines ≥ 50, a mandatory minimum-edit re-review
5. Read the full context of each changed file before declaring the edit done

4 red flags (a single hit forces the 5-step re-review):

• ≥ 2 new sections added
• ≥ 50 changed lines
• a new table or matrix added
• the same information already exists in another SoT

File naming (T1 prescriptive default): a new memory/policy/hook file takes an imperative form — no_X · X_to_Y · X_not_Y. Descriptive names (*_voice · *_posture) require two-step inference on recall and match utterance patterns weakly.

Blind Review Protocol

A guideline edit is reviewed by a reader who did not write it and does not know the deliberation behind it. In this project it runs as rung 3 of the Guideline Verification Ladder (.claude/agents/editor-in-chief.md); the protocol itself is project-agnostic:

1. Input carries no author intent — the diff, but no chat context and no rationale memo. The reviewer sees exactly what a future executor will see. Blindness withholds the author's intent, not file access: the reviewer reads each touched file whole (post-edit) before judging, since a hunk judged in isolation invites mechanical fixes that seed the next round's defects. On a re-pass the previous round's findings come too — that is reviewer output, not author intent.
2. Classification reply is mandatory: the reviewer returns, per hunk, a two-way verdict — substantive (an executor would act differently after this change) or invariant (wording/structure only, behavior unchanged) — plus any defects found against this skill's criteria.
3. Defect form: criterion id (gdl.*) · location · one-sentence issue · one-sentence fix direction · severity (critical / high / medium / low — the caller's fix-now-or-defer policy keys off it). A direction is not drafted replacement text: a reviewer asked to author the remedy tends to inflate its own findings to justify it. Abstract criticism ("feels verbose") is not a defect.
4. Self-containment probe: the reviewer must be able to state what the rule obliges without opening another document; if they cannot, flag gdl.self-contained.

Worked Examples

1. Recital → operative — ✗ "After comparing per-event shell hooks with a unified dispatcher, we consolidated to dispatch.py, which reduced JSON parses." ✓ "All Write|Edit hook logic lives in dispatch.py; add new advisories there, not as new shell hooks." (The comparison story goes to log.md.)
2. Failure mode in one line — ✗ a paragraph recounting how five byproduct stubs once skipped review and eleven defects surfaced. ✓ "Byproduct stubs get the same Desk VERIFY₂ — a flow that skips the stub-authoring entry point otherwise omits the gate."
3. Force tier made visible — ✗ "It is usually best to run the linter before handing off." ✓ "Run target-scope lint before hand-off (self-VERIFY₀); after 2 self-attempts on the same cause, hand off as-is."
4. Absorb, don't add — asked to document that contradiction pages need a per-theme drift block: ✗ a new "Drift Requirements" section in a second file. ✓ one row added to the existing per-target drift-block table in wiki-lint.md, other docs cross-reference it.
5. Pointer, not restatement — ✗ copying the open-source-AI license spectrum table from overview.md into a command SoT "for convenience." ✓ "License-spectrum definitions: see the cluster overview (single SoT)."

Antipatterns

#	Antipattern	Detection	Resolution
1	Decision option name in body ("Option E+")	checks.py (auto)	move to log.md
2	Reinforcement counter ("Reinforcement 2")	checks.py (auto)	remove from body
3	Introduction timestamp ("adopted 2026-05-10")	checks.py (auto)	move to log.md
4	Changelog/Change History section in a guide	checks.py (auto)	move to log.md
5	Recurrence-prevention narrative ("prevents a recurrence of…")	checks.py (auto)	one-line failure mode; story to log.md
6	External-precedent equivalence ("equivalent to the ProCon model")	project lint (meta_schema)	absorb the essence; drop the name
7	Benchmark absorption tally ("external benchmark 5/6")	project lint (meta_schema)	move to log.md
8	Table-row restatement paragraph	blind review (gdl.sot-link-not-restate)	keep the table; delete the prose
9	Rule stated as its own justification ("because this is important")	blind review (gdl.rule-not-reason)	state the trigger condition or nothing
10	Pointer-only rule ("see other doc" with no local obligation)	blind review (gdl.reason-not-pointer)	state the obligation locally, link for depth
11	Unreasoned exception ("except X" with no condition)	blind review (gdl.exception-reasoned)	attach the condition that licenses the exception
12	Unverified universal claim ("always fails", "never fires")	blind review (gdl.universal-claim-verified)	verify, qualify, or delete
13	Hedged force tier ("should generally always")	blind review (gdl.normative-restraint)	pick MUST/SHOULD/MAY
14	Dead rule kept as documentation	review (gdl.prune-or-enforce)	wire enforcement or delete
15	New section where absorption fits	review (gdl.absorb-before-adding)	fold into the existing section

Sources

• RFC 2119 — Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels — the MUST/SHOULD/MAY force tiers.
• Plain language act & operative clauses — U.S. Federal Plain Language Guidelines — operative wording, one-obligation-per-sentence.
• Recitals vs operative provisions — EU legislative drafting guide — recitals carry motive and are non-binding; operative articles carry obligations.
• Fresh Eyes Editing — Harvard Writing Center — review by a reader without the author's context (blind review).