byline: Skill for Claude Code

Humanizer

This is the full version of the REVISION PASS printed at the bottom of every build_writing_brief output. The brief carries a compressed, five-line form of it and tells the writer to come here by name for the definitions. This file is the one place the five groups are spelled out in full — do not re-derive them, and do not shorten them back into the brief; one rule, one definition.

The five groups

Read the whole draft once, start to finish, before touching anything. Then mark every tell you find, grouped below in the order you act on them.

1. Staging instead of stating. The sentence spends its first half setting up a rhetorical move instead of just making the claim — "It's not just a tool, it's a platform," a one-line paragraph that exists purely for cadence, a saying that sounds deep on first read and empty on the second ("at its core," "make no mistake"), a run-up before the actual point, or an argument answering an objection nobody in the piece raised ("To be clear, this isn't about...").

2. Rhythm by rule. The prose follows a pattern instead of a reason to be shaped that way — three-item lists reached for out of habit rather than because the list has three things in it, three sentences in a row opening with the same word, a dash used as the universal connector between any two clauses instead of a period, a comma, or a colon, two hedges stacked on one claim ("could potentially"), a hyphenated compound in every other sentence, or a passive construction that hides who did the thing ("mistakes were made" instead of naming who made them).

3. Inflation. A plain fact dressed in language sized for something bigger — "pivotal," "landscape," "testament," "crucial" applied to an ordinary detail, a routine event framed as a turning point, "associated with" standing in for the actual mechanism ("caused," "delayed," "replaced"), an expert who is never named, or "serves as"/"stands as"/"boasts" used in place of a plain "is" or "has."

4. Formatting by rule. Visual structure applied as decoration rather than to carry meaning — bold text scattered through body paragraphs instead of reserved for the summary block and the callout label, a heading in Title Case where the rest of the piece is not, or a heading whose very next sentence just restates it instead of answering it.