rhythm-killer

rhythm-killer is a skill for Claude Code from kalyvask/winning-writing. It costs 124 tokens per session (2,417 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A writing check that looks for two repetitive sentence patterns often associated with machine-written prose: runs of very short sentences and consecutive sentences with nearly identical lengths. It can check either pattern or both.

In plain words
What is it for?
Editing emails, essays, and other prose when the writing feels choppy, overly uniform, or noticeably machine-generated.
Why use it?
It helps make drafts sound less mechanical and more naturally varied. The check targets sentence rhythm rather than word choice or factual content.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the winning-writing plugin — 32 skills shipped together

Good fit Editing emails, essays, and other prose when the writing feels choppy, overly uniform, or noticeably machine-generated.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/rhythm-killer
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add kalyvask/winning-writing --skill rhythm-killer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kalyvask/winning-writing

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install winning-writing, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for rhythm-killer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/rhythm-killer/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/rhythm-killer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/rhythm-killer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/rhythm-killer/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for rhythm-killer

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/rhythm-killer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/rhythm-killer.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 124 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,417 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00124 $0.02417
Opus 5 $0.00062 $0.01208
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00483
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00242

Measured 10d ago against content hash 29024916659a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

rhythm-killer scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/rhythm-killer/SKILL.md · 181 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 181 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Rhythm killer

Source: points/ai-writing-rules.md (the "Choppy short-sentence stacks" entry) and live critiques on cold-email and personal-essay drafts where the model's rhythm gave it away even after surface tells were scrubbed.

What this skill does

Two passes behind one skill. Each pass fixes a different sentence-rhythm tell:

Target What it flags When to run alone
fragment-chain three or more short sentences/fragments back-to-back (each under ~6 words) When the draft has a visible staccato run ("Same apartment. Finally. Tax law travels.")
uniform-length two or more consecutive sentences within ~2 words of each other in length, especially with parallel syntactic structure ("You X. You Y. You Z.") When sentences are different in content but march at the same tempo

Default --target all runs both passes in order: fragment-chain first (more obvious), then uniform-length (subtler, often surfaces after the chain is fixed).

How to invoke

/rhythm-killer "draft text"
/rhythm-killer --target fragment-chain "draft text"
/rhythm-killer --target uniform-length "draft text"
/rhythm-killer --target all "draft text"

Without --target, default to all.


Target 1 — fragment-chain

Three or more short sentences (under ~6 words each) in a row read as AI rhythm. The model defaults to staccato when it doesn't know how to develop a thought, so it chops the thought into fragments that look "punchy" but pattern-match to LLM output.

The trigger pattern (verbatim from a live draft):

Next year I want you here. California. Same apartment, finally. Tax law works from anywhere.

Four short sentences. Each lands. The chain doesn't — it reads as a list of beats, not a thought.

How to fix

Pattern Rewrite move
3+ shorts in a row Keep one short (the strongest, usually first or last). Absorb the others into a longer surrounding sentence.
Opening with a fragment + immediate restatement Cut the restatement; the fragment carries.
Closing with three short summary beats Combine into one sentence with the final beat punching.

Read the full file on GitHub · 181 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 181 lines · 124 tokens per session scan A 29024916659a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

rhythm-killer is a skill published in the GitHub repository kalyvask/winning-writing (13 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 124 tokens to every session and 2,417 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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