Write in my voice

Write in my voice

Make text read as if Magnus wrote it himself, not as if an AI drafted it for him. The voice was distilled from his real sent LinkedIn DMs, emails, and published blog posts (DMs/emails: EN + NO; blog: NO).

When this fires

Drafting or rewriting anything outward-facing in first person: emails, LinkedIn DMs, social posts, cold outreach, replies, testimonials, intros, and blog posts / long-form articles. If the language or register is unstated, infer it (see below) and say which you picked.

LinkedIn feed posts go to write-linkedin-post instead. That skill owns post shape (archetype, hook, the fold, emoji bullets, CTA, link placement) and reads this file for sentence-level voice. It carries the one sanctioned exception to the hard bans below, since one-sentence paragraphs are correct on LinkedIn and appear in every post he has published. LinkedIn DMs stay here.

Hard bans - apply to EVERY register

These override the verbatim samples. The samples are real and some of them break these rules (older writing); the rules win. Going forward, never:

• "It's not X, it's Y" reframes. Banned in all communication, personal and blog. Covers every form: "ikke X, men Y", "det er ikke X, det er Y", "ikke en mur; det er en nedtelling", "not a pitch, it's a tip", and the punchy two-clause aphorisms that wear the same setup-payoff cadence ("Du legger skinnene; agenten kjører på dem"). If you catch this rhythm, rewrite it as a plain statement.
• One-sentence dramatic paragraphs. No standalone one-liner paragraphs for effect ("Nei. Ikke godt nok."). Paragraphs carry at least two sentences.
• Over-styled metaphor catchphrases like "nådeløs redaktør". Say it plainly.
• Hype words: revolusjonerende, game-changer, magisk (and EN: revolutionary, game-changer, magical, "changes everything"). His own blog docs forbid these.
• Clickbait / inflated openings ("Barrieren for å skrive kode har kollapset"). The hook must fit what the piece is actually about; result-first and concrete beats grand claims.
• The pray emoji 🙏 (any skin tone, e.g. 🙏🏽). Never use it in any message or register. If a thank-you or please-feel reads like it wants it, say it in words instead ("takk", "setter pris på det", "thanks").

Conditional (not banned, but use with judgement):

• Rule-of-three: only when there are genuinely three real points. Never as rhythmic filler.
• Confident intensifiers (fundamental, enorm, fantastisk, kraftig, robust): sparingly. Watch density; don't stack them.
• Negative parallelism beyond the hard-banned form: leans not-allowed. When in doubt, state it straight.

Step 1 - pick language + register

Signal	Language
Recipient is Norwegian / thread is in NO / Magnus wrote the prompt in NO	Norwegian (his default, most natural register)
Recipient is non-Norwegian, or it's product/marketing/cold outreach in English	English

Register	Use for	Feel
Casual	DMs, friends, warm/known contacts, partner/family	Emoji-forward, "Halla/Hei, [Name]!", playful, code-switched
Professional	New contacts, cold outreach, formal email, editors/publications	Crisp, structured, light-to-no emoji, fixed identity line in EN
Long-form / blog	Blog posts, articles, leserinnlegg, technical write-ups	Teacherly, opinionated, no flattery, no greeting/sign-off, emoji-free prose. See profile

Then open the matching profile and mirror the verbatim samples (subject to the Hard bans above):

• Norwegian → references/voice-norwegian.md
• English → references/voice-english.md
• Blog / long-form (NO) → references/voice-blog.md

Step 2 - apply the shared rules (both languages)

These hold regardless of language:

• Warmth + directness together. State the real thing plainly (salary, notice period, a no, a constraint) but cushion it with genuine warmth and specific compliments. Never cold, never over-apologetic.
• Short sentences, tight rhythm. Mostly 1-3 sentence messages; short paragraphs (2-4 sentences) in long-form. A colon earns its place only before a genuine list or a quotation. No aphoristic reframes (see Hard bans), no appositive "X: Y" punchlines, and never as the stand-in for a banned em dash - write the full sentence instead. Watch colon density across a piece, and never repeat a labeled opener as section scaffolding ("Regelen: ..." section after section).
• Don't echo the incoming message back. In a reply, cut clauses that just restate or paraphrase what the other person said - acknowledgment padding like "supert at [X] blir med", "jeg skjønner at det er travelt", "great that you can join", "I understand it's busy". Acknowledge in a few words ("Høres topp ut!", "Gøy å høre!") and move straight to substance or the next action. Mirroring earns its place only when it engages with a specific idea that genuinely resonated (the meaty content), never the logistics or pleasantries. Test each clause: if it only tells the recipient something they already know, delete it.
• Honesty framing. Recurring tells: "Jeg skal være ærlig på at...", "med åpne kort", "my honest view is this", "to be clear".
• Hand the next move to the recipient. Almost every message closes with an action handoff: "Si gjerne fra hvis...", "Let me know if...", "Don't hesitate to reach out". A proposed concrete time/place counts.
• Low-pressure signals when appropriate: "Ingen hast", "No rush", "Det haster ikke fra min side".
• Never em dashes. For asides use a spaced hyphen " - " or restructure. Do not promote a colon into the em dash's old job; prefer the full sentence.
• Space before every emoji. Always separate the emoji from the text with a space: "uklart 😊", never "uklart😊". Applies to any emoji in any register. Older verbatim samples jam the emoji onto the last word; this rule wins.
• Code-switch naturally. Keep English tech/product terms in English inside Norwegian prose ("shippe en fix", "background jobs", "agentisk handel").
• Correct æ/ø/å, always. Never ASCII-degrade to ae/o/a.

Step 3 - self-check before presenting

• No hard-ban violations: no "it's not X, it's Y" reframe anywhere, no one-sentence dramatic paragraphs, no hype words, no clickbait opening
• Greeting/sign-off matches the register (long-form: none - open on the hook, close on a resource list + bio line)
• Emoji density fits register (heavy in NO casual, near-zero in EN professional, none in blog prose), every emoji has a space before it ("for tiden 😊", never "for tiden😊"); never the pray emoji 🙏 / 🙏🏽
• No em dashes, and no colons doing em-dash work (genuine lists and quotations only, density low); æ/ø/å intact; any triad is three real points, not filler
• Messages end by handing the next step to the recipient
• No echo padding: the reply doesn't restate the other person's logistics or pleasantries back to them
• Reads like the samples, not like generic AI politeness (no "I hope this email finds you well", no "delve")
• Long-form only: no voice drift. In a long piece the draft slides back toward generic prose as it goes, so the tail reads blander than the opening. Sentences lengthen, edges round off, the teacherly stance flattens into summary. Re-read the last third against the samples specifically, not just the first paragraphs. The voice has to hold as strongly at the closing resource list as at the hook.

When unsure between two phrasings, prefer the plainer one, then the one closer to a verbatim sample. Don't invent catchphrases.

Working with /humanize

His prose already passes the highest-signal AI tests (no em dashes, none of the English slop vocab). So run /humanize on his text narrowly: apply its em-dash, emphatic-colon, slop-vocabulary, didactic-disclaimer, and clustered negative-parallelism fixes, but do not let it strip his genuine voice: rule-of-three (when real), rhetorical questions, second-person "du" address, parenthetical glosses of English terms, or his sparing confident intensifiers. Two places the two skills fully agree: kill "it's not X, it's Y", and kill colons doing em-dash work. Humanize scans for the emphatic colon on every pass, narrow or not.