humanize · diff
git:20260506.9e426ac to git:20260507.fa1bb02
63 added, 39 removed. Audit A to A.
---
name: humanize
- description: Makes a draft read like a real human typed it — not edited the polish out, just adds the asymmetry, light contractions, and occasional one-character typo a person actually leaves in. Use when a draft is technically correct but reads polished beyond plausibility, when the user wants to "rough it up," "make it more human," "less AI-clean," "add typos." Triggers on "humanize," "rough it up," "less polished," "add typos," "more casual," "sounds too clean."
+ description: Makes a draft read like a real human typed it — adds asymmetry, light contractions, and (rarely) one safe typo. Use only when a draft is technically correct but reads polished beyond plausibility, when the user wants to "rough it up," "make it more human," or "less AI-clean." Does NOT run on high-stakes writing (see "When NOT to humanize"). Triggers on "humanize," "rough it up," "less polished," "more casual," "sounds too clean."
---
# Humanize
Source: `points/ai-writing-rules.md` and the centaur-writer thesis. The point of this skill is the inverse of every other skill in this repo — most of them sharpen, this one *de-sharpens* deliberately.
+ **Operator note (2026-05-06):** This skill was running too hot. Too many typos and missing words landed in finals. The bias has been moved firmly toward "skip" rather than "inject." If in doubt, do nothing.
+
## The premise
A perfect email is suspicious. Real people:
- Use contractions inconsistently ("it's" once, "it is" once in the same email — humans aren't consistent)
- - Drop articles in a hurry ("just landed in SF, heading to the office")
- - Leave one micro-typo per ~300 words (not a spelling error — a homophone, a missing space, a doubled word)
- Vary sentence punctuation (sometimes a period where a comma would be cleaner)
- - Use parentheses or em-dashes inconsistently (well, em-dashes are banned now — but the *inconsistency* is what reads human)
+ - Use parentheses inconsistently
- Repeat a word from the previous sentence sometimes (real attention drift)
- A model output is *too clean*. This skill leaves real-person residue in.
+ A model output is *too clean*. This skill leaves a small amount of real-person residue in. Note: residue, not damage. Missing required words and unsafe typos are damage; do not introduce them.
## Two modes
### Mode 1 — Shorten + roughen (default)
Take the draft and:
1. Cut 10–20% of the words
- 2. Convert 60–70% of "I am / it is / they are / cannot" to contractions
- 3. Drop 1–2 articles where context allows ("the" or "a") — only where a human would naturally elide
- 4. Pick ONE place to leave a single micro-typo (see types below)
- 5. Vary one sentence's punctuation in a slightly imperfect way (a period instead of a comma; a sentence fragment)
+ 2. Convert most "I am / it is / they are / cannot" to contractions, but mix in one full form somewhere for inconsistency
+ 3. Drop the *subject pronoun* in one casual opener if the draft has one (never drop articles)
+ 4. Vary one sentence's punctuation in a slightly imperfect way (a period instead of a comma; a sentence fragment)
+ 5. **Optional, only for pieces over 250 words and only in low-stakes mode:** introduce ONE approved typo. For shorter pieces or any high-stakes piece: skip the typo entirely.
### Mode 2 — Roughen only (preserve length)
Same as above, no length cut.
- ## Approved typo types (one per ~300 words, never more)
+ ## Approved typo types (one per piece, max — and only for pieces over 250 words in low-stakes mode)
- A typo here is a *signal of humanness*, not carelessness. The wrong typo is worse than no typo. Use only one of these per email:
+ If you introduce a typo, use only one of these two safe types:
- - **Missing space:** "tothe" or "i'll" with lowercase i (a phone-thumbs slip)
- - **Doubled small word:** "to to" or "the the" (auto-correct miss, classic)
- - **Homophone slip:** "your" for "you're" (only in a casual context — never in a formal application)
- - **Dropped period at end of a sentence in the middle of a paragraph** (one place, not the last sentence)
- - **Single-character drop:** "thats" instead of "that's" (one place only)
+ - **Doubled small word:** "to to" or "the the" or "and and" (auto-correct miss, classic — readers parse past it)
+ - **Missing space inside a contraction or compound:** "i'll" with lowercase i (a phone-thumbs slip)
- **Never use:** misspelled common words, mangled names, mangled numbers, garbled URLs, broken capitalization at sentence start. Those are real errors. The goal is "human" not "drunk."
+ That's it. The two above are the only approved types.
+ **NEVER use:**
+ - Homophone slips ("your"/"you're," "their"/"there"). High-evaluation readers flag these as illiteracy.
+ - Dropped period mid-paragraph. Reads as broken parsing, not humanity.
+ - Single-character drop ("thats" for "that's"). Reads as carelessness.
+ - Misspelled common words, mangled names, mangled numbers, garbled URLs.
+ - Broken capitalization at sentence start.
+ - **Dropped articles, negations, subjects, verbs, or any content-bearing word.** Missing words are not informalisms — they are damage. The reader cannot recover the meaning.
+
+ The wrong typo is worse than no typo. **When uncertain, skip.**
+
## Approved contraction rules
- "I am" → "I'm" (always, except in formal opening)
- "it is" → "it's" (most of the time)
- "they are" → "they're" (always when casual)
- "cannot" → "can't" (always — "cannot" is a corporate tell)
- "do not" → "don't" (always when casual)
- "would not" → "wouldn't" (always)
- "I will" → "I'll" (most of the time, but mix in "I will" once for emphasis)
- ## Article-drop patterns (use sparingly — one or two)
+ ## Subject-pronoun drop (sparingly — only one per piece)
- - "I'll come to your office" → "I'll come to your office" (no change — articles before possessives stay)
- - "I sent you the proposal" → "Sent you the proposal" (drop subject, keep article)
- - "I'm thinking about a pivot" → "Thinking about a pivot" (drop subject, keep article)
- - "Just got back from London — let's talk Tuesday" → fine as-is
+ Drop the subject pronoun in a casual opener, never the article:
- The pattern: drop the *subject pronoun* in casual openers, not articles. That's how humans actually shortcut.
+ - "I just got back from London" → "Just got back from London"
+ - "I sent you the proposal" → "Sent you the proposal"
+ - "I'm thinking about a pivot" → "Thinking about a pivot"
- ## When NOT to humanize
+ Do not drop "the," "a," "an," "to," or any other article or function word. Do not drop the subject inside a clause that already has one.
- - **Cold emails to formal recipients** (judges, regulators, journalism editors at top publications). Polished is correct here.
- - **Gratitude notes.** They should already be in the user's voice — humanizing further means the user wrote it themselves.
- - **Op-eds.** Editors reject typos. Polish is the price of publication.
- - **Job application cover letters at large companies** if the company is famously formal.
- - **Anything where the recipient is paid to evaluate writing quality** (book editors, MFA professors).
+ ## When NOT to humanize (skip entirely — output the input unchanged)
- For everything else — startup CEO outreach, peer-to-peer networking emails, Substack drafts, Slack updates — humanizing is appropriate.
+ The skill does not run on:
+ - **LinkedIn About sections, bios, profile pages.** These are evaluated word-by-word by recruiters.
+ - **Cold emails to formal recipients** (judges, regulators, journalism editors at top publications, senior partners at funds, hiring managers at named companies).
+ - **Job application materials** (cover letters, application short-answers, follow-up notes).
+ - **Op-eds and any pitch to a publication.** Editors reject typos.
+ - **Gratitude notes.** They should already be in the user's voice.
+ - **Six-word summaries** or any deliberately compressed format.
+ - **Anything with a fact-checkable public surface** (Substack drafts that name specific people, GitHub READMEs, anything pushed to a public repo).
+ - **Any piece under 200 words.** Too short for residue to read as human; reads as carelessness instead.
+
+ For all of the above, the skill should output the original draft unchanged and explicitly note: *"Skipped humanize — high-stakes context."*
+
## Output format
```
## Original
[the input draft]
## Humanized
- [the rewritten draft, with the changes]
+ [the rewritten draft, with the changes — or the original unchanged if high-stakes]
## What changed
- - Cut [N] words (X% reduction)
+ - Cut [N] words (X% reduction) [or "no length change"]
- Contractions: [list]
- - Article drops: [list]
- - Micro-typo introduced: [the typo, where, why this type]
- - Punctuation variation: [where, what changed]
+ - Subject-pronoun drops: [list, max 1]
+ - Punctuation variation: [where, what changed, max 1]
+ - Micro-typo introduced: [the typo, where, why this type — or "none"]
+ - High-stakes detected: [yes/no — if yes, no changes were applied]
- ## Read aloud
- Read the humanized version aloud. Does it sound like the user texting a friend? If yes, ship. If it sounds like AI's "casual mode" (forced informality), back off — over-roughened reads worse than over-polished.
+ ## Pre-output review (required)
+ - [ ] Re-read the humanized version word by word
+ - [ ] No required words missing (subjects, verbs, articles, negations)
+ - [ ] No homophone slips
+ - [ ] At most ONE micro-typo across the whole piece
+ - [ ] Reads as "in a hurry," not "drunk" or "sloppy"
```
## The litmus test
- A friend reading the email blind should think *"yeah, that's how they write when they're in a hurry"* — not *"this email has a typo, were they drunk?"* If the second reaction is plausible, the typo is wrong; pick a different one or skip.
+ A friend reading the email blind should think *"yeah, that's how they write when they're in a hurry"* — not *"this email has a typo, were they drunk?"* and never *"did they finish this sentence?"*
- The goal isn't *errors*. The goal is the texture of a real person typing on a real keyboard while half-listening to a podcast.
+ If a missing word makes the meaning ambiguous, it is damage, not humanity. Reject the change.
+
+ The goal isn't *errors*. The goal is the texture of a real person typing on a real keyboard while half-listening to a podcast — but a person who still proofread once before hitting send.
+
+ ## For the GitHub auto-push agent
+
+ If this skill is being chained with an auto-publish agent (e.g., one that pushes to GitHub or sends email): add a separate proofread pass after humanize that checks for missing required words and unsafe typos. Do not trust this skill's output to be ready-to-publish without that review.