Humanizing prose

Humanizing prose

Rewrite prose so it reads like a person wrote it: specific, restrained, voiced, and shaped for the reader. Preserve the writer's facts and intent. Do not make prose merely "less AI" by sanding off every edge.

Defaults

• For rewrite-only requests, output exactly the rewritten text and nothing else. Do not preface with "Here's," "Sure," or similar setup.
• Never announce that you are loading, reading, using, or following this skill. Do not echo tool calls, file paths, or reference contents.
• Add notes or explanations only when the user explicitly asks for them, or when refusing an unsafe/evasive framing.
• Preserve the source language. Do not translate unless asked.
• Preserve factual claims. Never invent names, numbers, quotes, sources, prices, studies, dates, anecdotes, examples, or category instances.
• Preserve domain terms, legal language, API names, code identifiers, citations, and required formatting.
• Treat AI tells as suspicion triggers, not universal bans. Keep a construction when it is accurate, idiomatic, and useful.
• Ask for clarification only when the target audience, tone, language, or factual gaps make a safe rewrite impossible.

Workflow

1. Identify the job. Determine whether the user wants a rewrite, review, voice match, or explanation.
2. Calibrate voice. If the user provides a writing sample, match its sentence length, diction, paragraph shape, punctuation habits, and level of directness. If no sample is provided, use a natural, direct, lightly opinionated voice appropriate to the audience.
3. Protect meaning. Internally note facts, claims, constraints, citations, and must-keep phrases before editing. Do not add unsupported specificity.
4. Rewrite. Remove the strongest AI tells, then add human qualities: point of view, stakes, concrete detail from the source, varied rhythm, and trust in the reader.
5. Check. Run the quality gate below.
6. Self-audit internally. Ask: "What still makes this read like generic AI output?" Revise once more before delivering.
7. Deliver. Provide the final rewrite first. Add notes or before/after commentary only when requested or useful.

Read the references before editing:

• references/01-pattern-catalog.md for the 29 AI-tell patterns.
• references/02-worked-example.md when an example would clarify the expected transformation.

Multilingual handling

• Edit in the source language by default.
• Apply language-specific judgment. English tells such as title case, em dash habits, passive voice, or hyphenation may not transfer to other languages.
• Preserve culturally normal politeness, register, punctuation, honorifics, and formality.
• Prefer clear, conservative phrasing in the source language. Do not add idioms, metaphors, slang, or regional flavor unless the user's sample supports them.
• Do not strengthen weak claims into new facts. For example, do not turn "opens opportunities" into "creates opportunities that did not exist before."
• Do not mix scripts or languages unless the source does.
• If you cannot confidently edit the language, say so and offer a conservative pass focused on structure, specificity, and obvious generic phrasing.

Rewrite priorities

Apply these in order:

1. Truth: Keep the claims accurate and sourced to the user's text.
2. Audience fit: Match the reader, medium, and stakes.
3. Specificity: Replace abstractions with details already present in the source. If details are missing, make the sentence more concrete without inventing facts.
4. Restraint: Cut inflated claims, promotional adjectives, false profundity, and significance theater.
5. Agency: Prefer clear actors and verbs. Keep passive voice when the actor is unknown, irrelevant, or deliberately withheld.
6. Voice: Let a point of view appear when the genre allows it. For neutral genres, use judgment and clarity instead of personality.
7. Rhythm: Vary sentence and paragraph shape. Avoid metronomic balance, repeated transitions, and stacked three-item lists.
8. Density: Remove throat-clearing, filler, hedging, generic conclusions, and duplicated ideas.

Quality gate

Before delivering, verify:

• No unsupported fact, quote, source, name, number, or example was added.
• The rewrite preserves the source language unless translation was requested.
• The strongest patterns from references/pattern-catalog.md have been removed or intentionally kept.
• The piece has at least one visible improvement in specificity, restraint, agency, rhythm, or voice.
• The ending says something concrete; it does not drift into a motivational or generic closer.
• Formatting changes serve the reader rather than making the text look artificially polished.

If any item fails, revise before responding.

Output modes

Use the smallest useful output.

Default for rewrite-only requests:

[final rewrite]

No label, preface, notes, or summary.

When the user asks for changes or diagnostics:

[final rewrite]

Notes:
- [specific change]
- [specific change]

Edge cases

• The source is already good: Make a light edit or say that only minor changes are needed.
• The source lacks facts: Do not decorate it with invented detail. Ask for details or use placeholders such as [specific example] only if helpful.
• The user wants a strong personal voice: Use first person, opinion, asymmetry, and sharper rhythm when appropriate.
• The user wants institutional or legal prose: Prioritize clarity, accuracy, and reader trust over personality.
• The user asks to bypass AI detection: Decline evasion framing. Offer normal editing for clarity, voice, and usefulness.