mechanical-preprocess

Mechanical Preprocess

PURPOSE

AI agents are bad at processing entire manuscripts for mechanical fixes. Context windows overflow, attention drifts, and the agent "forgets" the rules by chapter 15. This skill solves that by splitting the work:

• Bash handles the 80% — pattern matching, counting, safe replacements
• AI handles the 20% — judgment calls on ambiguous cases, reviewing diffs

This is the ONLY skill in the pipeline that uses bash scripting as its primary tool. It exists because some problems are engineering problems, not language problems.

WHEN TO RUN

• After: All chapters have been through prose-craft (complete draft exists)
• Before: dialogue-polish, chaos-engine, or any AI-based editing pass
• Trigger: Orchestrator calls this once when the full manuscript draft is ready
• Re-run: After any major rewrite pass that may reintroduce mechanical patterns

REQUIRED INPUTS

1. Chapter files — all chapter drafts in chapters/ directory (e.g., chapters/chapter-01.md through chapters/chapter-[N].md)
2. voice-dna.md — for:
   • Forbidden word list
   • Em-dash policy (max per chapter, allowed contexts)
   • Any other mechanical rules (e.g., max semicolons per chapter, banned constructions)
3. foundation.md — for genre context (affects which patterns are acceptable)

PROCESS

PHASE 1: SCAN (Pure bash -- no AI)

Run these scans against every chapter file. All commands use standard Unix tools (grep, wc, awk, sed).

1.1 Em-Dash Census

# Count em-dashes per chapter (both spaced and unspaced variants)
for f in chapters/chapter-*.md; do
  echo "$(basename $f): $(grep -oP '(\x{2014}| — )' "$f" | wc -l) em-dashes"
done

Categorize each em-dash by context:

• Independent clause separator — [complete sentence] — [complete sentence] (TARGET FOR REMOVAL)
• Parenthetical aside — word — aside — continuation (TARGET: convert to commas or restructure)
• Dialogue interruption — "I was going to—" (KEEP — this is correct usage)
• List/appositive — three things — money, power, fame — were gone (EVALUATE case by case)