structured-writing

A guide to organising writing so the main point appears first and supporting details follow in a logical order. It covers BLUF, the Minto Pyramid Principle, the inverted pyramid, and SPQR.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to structure emails, status updates, reports, strategy memos, announcements, briefs, and other documents for busy or decision-making readers.
Why use it?
It helps readers understand the answer, request, or decision quickly without searching through a long message for its purpose.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/viktorbezdek/skillstack/structured-writing
Any agent
npx skills add viktorbezdek/skillstack --skill structured-writing
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/viktorbezdek/skillstack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 127 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,405 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00127 $0.01405
Opus 5 $0.00063 $0.00702
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00281
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00140

Measured 2d ago against content hash a0fc304641ad, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

structured-writing 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 2d 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.

communication/skills/structured-writing/SKILL.md · 133 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 133 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Structured Writing

Most writing fails by burying the point. A structured document leads with the conclusion, supports it with grouped evidence, and lets the reader stop reading the moment they have what they need.

Pick a structure

Structure Best for Lead
BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) Emails, status updates, requests The ask or the answer
Minto Pyramid Reports, strategy memos, analyses The single governing thought
Inverted pyramid News-style updates, announcements The headline fact
SPQR (Situation-Problem-Question-Resolution) Briefs, consulting narratives The situation, built to the ask

Pick by reader, not by habit. A busy executive needs BLUF; a peer reviewing analysis needs a pyramid; a team reading an announcement needs inverted pyramid.

BLUF — the default for async work

A BLUF message opens with: the ask, the answer, or the conclusion — in under 30 words — followed by supporting detail the reader can skip.

BLUF: [ask / decision / answer in one sentence]

Why it matters:
- [reason 1 in ≤12 words]
- [reason 2]

Details (only if the BLUF doesn't answer their question):
- [supporting fact with number]
- [supporting fact with reference]

What I need from you:
- [explicit ask with deadline] or "FYI — no action needed."

Rules:

  • The subject line is the BLUF, compressed.
  • The BLUF sentence is self-contained — it must make sense without the rest.
  • If someone replies from the first 30 words, the message worked.

Full worked examples and email/Slack/standup templates in references/bluf-templates.md.

The Minto Pyramid

Barbara Minto's pyramid: every document has one governing thought, supported by 3-5 grouped arguments, each supported by evidence.

                  Governing thought
                 (what + why + so-what)
                          |
          ┌───────────────┼───────────────┐
      Argument 1      Argument 2      Argument 3
          |               |               |
       Evidence       Evidence       Evidence

Read the full file on GitHub · 133 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 2d ago First seen · 133 lines · 127 tokens per session scan A a0fc304641ad

Subscribe to this mod's changes

structured-writing is a skill published in the GitHub repository viktorbezdek/skillstack (11 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 127 tokens to every session and 1,405 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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