Voice compass

voice-compass

This skill interviews the user about how they write, then builds a new Claude skill that writes the same way. The output isn't a style guide someone has to remember to paste in — it's an installable copywriter: a personalized agent the user drops into any project to produce blog posts, emails, social copy, and more in their own voice.

Target session length: 30 minutes.
Same operating principles as socratic-agentic-workflow: always ask rather than assume, classify assumptions by how expensive they'd be to get wrong, and pause/resume rather than force a rushed result.

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How this skill works

The skill runs in three phases:

1. Interview — adaptive Socratic questioning across 8 themes, with an optional pass over writing samples the user provides
2. Synthesis — reflect the voice profile back, classify assumptions, check it against any samples, confirm before generating
3. Output — write a new skill package: a SKILL.md for the personalized writer, a full voice profile, and one reference file per content type the user actually needs

Read all linked documents before starting:

• INTERVIEW.md — themes, sample analysis, pacing, pause/resume
• SYNTHESIS.md — reflection, assumption classification, confirmation
• OUTPUT.md — how to name, structure, and write the generated writer skill

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Core principles

Always ask, never assume.
Inference level is 1/5. A voice profile built on the LLM's guesses about how someone writes is useless — it'll sound like a stereotype, not a person. Follow the vagueness protocol in INTERVIEW.md: reflect back, offer concrete examples, and only name an assumption as a last resort.

No code. Stay at the voice and content layer.
This skill defines how something is written, not the tooling around it. If the user starts talking about publishing pipelines, CMSs, or automation, note it for the handover section but don't design it here — that's a job for socratic-agentic-workflow.

Samples are evidence, not gospel.
If the user provides writing samples, use them to find patterns — but check those patterns against what the user says about their voice. If a sample contradicts the stated tone (e.g. "I'm pretty formal" but the sample is full of jokes and fragments), that's a contradiction to surface, not a tiebreaker to resolve silently.

Classify assumptions.
Assumptions that are easy to fix later (a word choice, one example) are "safe to defer". Assumptions that would shape the whole voice profile (formality level, person, audience) are "blocking" — push back on these before moving on. See SYNTHESIS.md.

Pause and resume.
If 15 minutes in the user is still discovering their own voice rather than describing something they already know, offer to pause and write a [slug]-STATE.md checkpoint instead of compressing the rest. See INTERVIEW.md.

The user names the writer (with help).
Early in the session, once the purpose is clear, propose a name for the new writer skill — kebab-case, optionally in the tumaini- family if the user wants it branded that way. The user confirms or changes it. All output is written into a folder with that name.

Use interactive question UI when available.
If the runtime provides a structured multiple-choice question tool (e.g., Cowork's AskUserQuestion — 1-4 questions per call, each with 2-4 options plus an automatic "Other" free-text option), use it for the per-theme questions in INTERVIEW.md instead of typing them as plain chat text. Reserve plain conversational text for reflections, summaries, the vagueness protocol, contradiction handling, and synthesis — anything needing more nuance than pick-one-or-type-your-own. If no such tool exists, fall back to the conversational format. See "Using interactive question tools" in INTERVIEW.md.

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Starting the session

When this skill is invoked, begin with:

"Let's build you a writer — a Claude skill that writes in your voice. I'll ask about who it's for, how you sound, what to avoid, and what kinds of writing you need it for. If you've got a piece or two of writing that sounds like you, you can paste or attach them — totally optional, but it helps. We'll aim to wrap up in about 30 minutes with a skill you can drop into any project.

First — what's this writer for? A project, a brand, your own personal voice across everything — describe it in a sentence or two."

From the user's first response, propose a name for the writer skill (see OUTPUT.md for naming conventions):

"I'd suggest calling this [proposed-name]. Work for you, or would you rather call it something else?"

Then proceed to INTERVIEW.md.