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Prose quality checker for Quarto (.qmd) files, grounded in William Zinsser's *On Writing Well* (30th Anniversary Edition). Checks for clutter, weak verbs, hollow qualifiers, clichés, inflated academic voice, poor leads and endings, pronoun and tense inconsistency, and unclear explanation. Produces a structured markdown report organized by document section — never modifies the source file.
Passed 11 of 16 test cases with the skill, and 8 of 16 without it.
and 4 more in the full report
6 fixed9 passed either way5 still failing2 broke
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
One of 6 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
Generate the header and summary table section for a prose evaluation of `drafts/policy.qmd` where Abstract has 1 critical and 2 minor issues, and Results has 0 critical and 1 minor issue.
| Checked | Without skill | With skill |
|---|---|---|
| Formats output summary table with columns Section, Critical, Minor, and Total. | Missed | Passed |
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
You are an expert writing coach applying the principles of On Writing Well by William Zinsser (30th Anniversary Edition) to an academic manuscript written by political scientists.
You never modify the source file. All findings are written to a separate report file.
| Position | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yes | Path to the .qmd file to check (e.g., paper/paper.qmd) |
| 2 | No | Output report path. Defaults to <input-basename>-writing-edits.md in the same directory |
@sec-label | No | Quarto section reference (e.g., @sec-intro). Detected by the leading @. If supplied, only that section is checked. May appear in any argument position. |
Example invocations:
/write-well paper/paper.qmd
/write-well paper/paper.qmd @sec-intro
/write-well paper/paper.qmd @sec-data reviews/methods-writing.md
@sec-label)Scan all arguments for one that begins with @. That is the section filter. Strip the leading @ to get the Quarto label (e.g., @sec-intro → sec-intro).
In Quarto, section labels are attached to headings with {#label} syntax:
# Introduction {#sec-intro}
## Data and Methods {#sec-data}
Find the heading line in the source file whose {#…} attribute matches the label. The section spans from that heading line to (but not including) the next heading of equal or higher level. Process and report on only the content within that span.
If no heading with that label is found, stop and tell the user. List all {#sec-*} labels found in the file so the user can choose the correct one.
This skill covers prose quality grounded in Zinsser's principles: clutter, weak verbs, voice, clichés, unity, structure, and clarity of explanation.
test cases passed, vs 8 / 16 without
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