---
name: developmental-edit
description: "Use when asked to edit, review, or improve a draft's argument and organization rather than its wording — assesses whether ideas are in an order the reader can follow, flags missing steps and claims stated without support, and proposes reordering so anything a passage depends on comes before it. Touches no sentences: no rewording, grammar, tone, or concision. Do NOT use for line/copy editing of wording (that is line-edit), for keeping a quotation faithful, or for translation."
metadata:
  decimalai-skill-id: "82b8d06f-2ed3-46f0-9c07-ce7cbecbbde7"
  decimalai-version-id: "66b2911a-9cc9-467b-8b7a-da4a3201774a"
  decimalai-version: "1"
  decimalai-body-sha256: "ee41cec1e1593733ab8ac4b00d9dba35a4d04ead94b5a02f4c9cec5e091c04c3"
  decimalai-name: "developmental-edit"
  decimalai-format: "1"
  decimalai-invocation: "model"
  decimalai-category: "documentation"
  decimalai-source: "https://app.decimal.ai/s/developmental-edit@1/SKILL.md"
---
# Developmental Edit — Structure Only, Not Sentences

Handed a draft to "edit" or "improve," the base model defaults to line editing: it rewords sentences, fixes grammar, and tightens prose, while leaving the *order of ideas* untouched. A developmental edit is the opposite job. You work only at the structural level — the sequence and completeness of the argument — and you change no wording at all.

The organizing idea: **a document is a dependency graph.** Every concept, term, and claim depends on things the reader must already have in hand. A term cannot be used before it is defined; a step cannot be taken before its prerequisite; a claim cannot stand without the support it rests on. A well-structured draft is a valid ordering of that graph — every prerequisite appears *before* the thing that needs it. Your job is to find where the draft violates that ordering, or leaves a node with no path to it, and propose the structural move that repairs it.

## When to Activate

Activate when someone hands you a draft — an article, memo, doc section, README, essay, explanation — and asks you to edit it, review it, give feedback, or make it better, without narrowing the ask to wording. Signals: "does this flow?", "is this in the right order?", "what's missing?", "does the argument hold together?", a draft pasted with "thoughts?"

Do NOT activate to polish wording sentence by sentence (that is line-edit), to check a quotation against its source, or to translate. If the request is explicitly about word choice, rhythm, or grammar, this is the wrong tool.

## Three moves — and only these three

Read the draft as a reader who knows nothing beyond what earlier sentences established. Each place the reader gets stuck maps to exactly one move:

1. **Reorder for a broken dependency.** A term, concept, or result is used before the draft has introduced it — a forward reference. Name the dependency ("X is used in paragraph 2 but only defined in paragraph 4") and propose moving the defining content ahead of the passage that needs it. Fix the *position*, not the words.

2. **Flag a missing step.** The chain jumps from A to C with no B — the reader is asked to cross a gap the draft never bridges (an instruction assumes an action never stated; a conclusion skips the reasoning that would earn it). Name the step that is missing and where it belongs. Do not write the step yourself; that is drafting, not editing.

3. **Flag an unsupported claim.** A claim is asserted with nothing the draft has established for it to rest on — no evidence, no prior result, no reason. Name the claim and say what kind of support it would need. Do not supply the support, and do not soften or reword the claim.

## The restraint (this is what makes it a *developmental* edit)

- Do **not** reword, tighten, split, or fix the grammar of any sentence — even an awkward one. Leave the prose exactly as written.
- Do **not** change tone, voice, register, or reading level.
- Do **not** rewrite a passage to "show what you mean." Point at the structural problem and name the move; the author does the writing.
- If the draft's ideas are already in a valid dependency order and nothing is missing or unsupported, **say the structure is sound and stop.** That is the correct result — not a failure to find something. Do not manufacture a structural problem, and do not fall back to wordsmithing to have something to say.

## How to answer

Lead with the structural verdict: is the order valid, or not? Then give the specific moves — for each, the problem (which dependency is broken, which step is missing, which claim is unsupported) and the concrete relocation or flag. Refer to passages by their content or position, not by rewriting them. Keep every one of the author's sentences intact.