Lean writing
Claude Code Plugins, Commands, and Skills
npx -y skills add tony/ai-workflow-plugins --skill lean-writingAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
One thing to look at
- 2 stars2 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.
What its author says it does
Copied from the file, not written here
Use while producing or editing any prose or code — commit messages, PR and ticket bodies, docs, comments, or implementation — to keep the first draft tight and slop-free: lead with the result, state current truth over the journey, reuse before creating, and preserve references when editing. Guidance only; it never edits files. To clean slop out of existing files in place, use the `lean-tighten` skill; for repo-wide or branch-scoped commit cleanup, use the `slop-scan` skill or the `pr-deslop` skill.
SKILL.md
2.3 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it
Lean writing
Produce tight, slop-free prose and code the first time, so nothing has to be cleaned up later.
Core moves
- Lead with the result. Cut preamble ("Certainly!", "Here is…") and postamble ("Let me know if…").
- State current truth, not the journey. No diary of what changed, what you tried, or how you got here — the artifact is the freshest take, not a log.
- Reuse before you create. Search for an existing file, component, helper, API, test, or doc section before adding another.
- Smallest coherent change. Keep unrelated cleanup out of it.
- Preserve references when editing. Never orphan a link, citation, anchor, warning, or a comment that documents an invariant or "why".
- Prefer prose and nested sections over tables. Reach for a table only when the data is genuinely matrix-shaped and stable.
- One command per code block; keep comments outside the fence.
- No coded rule labels (
[R1],Option B) in text a human reads.
Calibrate to the project
Read ./AGENTS.md and ./CLAUDE.md. When they define a slop rubric or
a house voice, that governs — match it.
Deeper catalog
See references/lean-rubric.md for the full
signature list, preservation rules, and the "add a table / file / test"
decision blocks.
While tightening, don't add slop
Replacements must be concrete and shorter than what they replace. Never narrate your own edits ("I tightened…", "cleaned up…"). Fix the text, not a description of the fix.
Portability notes
- Bundled files — every relative path in this skill points at a file shipped inside this skill directory. Read them from here, not from the host's plugin tree.