--- name: prompt-pre-editing description: > Pre-edit a person's draft prompt for another agent session. Find what will make the run fail (a thing named but never described, a phrase with several readings, unranked goals, sources with no stated role, asks that return what is already known, an act with no owner, no output contract) and hand back the whole rewritten prompt ready to paste. After it is sent, follow the run, judge the result against expected results committed beforehand, and change this skill or the skill the prompt invoked from what the run showed. Triggers on "feedback on my prompt", "what should I change", "peek at my prompt in tmux", "redraw my prompt", "help me with this prompt", or an unsent draft in another pane. Not for writing your own brief to a lane (dispatch-discipline). metadata: type: skill version: 0.1.0 scope: a person's draft prompt to another agent, the rewrite, following the run, evolving from it --- # Prompt pre-editing **The name.** In machine translation, *pre-editing* is a person rewriting a source text before a machine processes it. Typical rewrites make references explicit, remove ambiguity and give one instruction per sentence, which is what controlled languages prescribe. Here the agent is the machine and the person's draft is the source text. Offering the rewrite back so the person can send it or correct it is what conversation analysis calls a *formulation*: saying back the gist and upshot of what someone said so they can confirm it (Heritage and Watson, 1979). Earned 2026-10-06. The worked example is `examples/261006-factory-vocabulary.md`, with the draft, the defects, the rewrite, the expected results and the result. ## 1. Read before judging - Read the draft in full. An unsent draft sits in the other session's composer: `tmux capture-pane -p -J -t -S -200`. A long composer shows only its last lines. Say which part you could not see. Never type into that pane (`dispatch-discipline` §4). - Read everything the draft points to, such as other panes, files, reviews and packets. The missing referent is usually there. - Read the person's standing context, such as the system instructions and recent episodes, to learn why they chose these sources. - Verify every fact you will put into the rewrite in the same turn (`dispatch-discipline` §3). On 2026-10-06 the bridge the rewrite cited was checked as `coaia-narrative/src/asterion-bridge.ts` before it went in. ## 2. Find the defects Name each defect by its class and by what it will do to the result. They are listed in the order they most often decide the outcome. 1. **Missing referent.** The draft points at something ("that", "these patterns", "the fact that we want") and never describes it, so the agent fills it with the generic meaning. Find the person's own instances. Two instances make a pattern nameable from evidence. 2. **Several readings.** A phrase that can mean different jobs, such as the patterns themselves, the property of having them, or the practice of drawing them out. Pick the reading the evidence supports, or ask for one answer per reading. 3. **Unranked goals.** Several jobs with equal weight. Rank them and put the one the person needs most first. 4. **Sources with no role.** Give each source its reason, and let the agent drop one that contributes nothing. 5. **Asks that return what is known.** Cut them, or narrow them to what only this job can find. 6. **An act with no owner.** "We'd inject", "it will be published". Say who does each act. The agent hands words back to the person. It does not type into another session. 7. **No output contract.** Give numbered returns in order, word limits, the exact slot the words must fit, and holds on outward acts such as publishing a package or a review. A rewrite owes the five things a brief owes (`dispatch-discipline` §5): the task in the imperative, stores by path, the scope boundary, verified facts and completion marks. ## 3. Hand back 1. The defects, coded (continue the conversation's codes), each in one or two sentences with its consequence. 2. The whole rewritten prompt in one code block, ready to replace the composer text. Keep the person's invocation (the slash command and IDs) and their wording where it was already clear. 3. The expected results, coded `E`, short. Do not narrate what the person will do, as in "add one line" or "watch whether". That is advice, and the person has to turn it into text. The rewrite is the deliverable. The person's words on 2026-10-06 were: "reading your last message sound like passively describing what I'll do without confronting". ## 4. After it is sent: follow, judge, evolve 1. **Commit the expected results before the run ends.** Put them in an example file in `examples/`. The commit time shows they were not adjusted to fit the result (`dispatch-discipline` §7). 2. **Follow the run without polling by hand.** Run a background loop on the pane's busy line (`esc to interrupt`) that exits after three idle checks 30 seconds apart. Then read the result from the transcript (`~/.claude/projects//.jsonl`) and from its artefacts, such as commits and files. Do not judge from the screen alone, because a pane's state is not the work's state. 3. **Judge each `E` item:** met, partly met or missed. For each miss, name its cause: the draft, the rewrite, or the skill the prompt invoked. 4. **Change the skill at fault in the same turn.** Change this one when the rewrite caused the miss. Change the invoked skill (for example the `apply` action of `miadi-review`) when it misled the agent. Add a ledger line, commit and push. 5. **Pre-edit the next prompt for that session** with this same procedure. 6. **Report:** what came back, what changed in which skill, and the next prompt ready to paste. Do not type it into the session. The person expects the first run to miss and does not want to discuss the miss. Do the steps above and come back with the evolved state. ## Ledger - 2026-10-06, 0.1.0. First version, from the round on `miadi-review apply` for naming the factory's bridge pattern. The first feedback was advice, and the person called it passive. The second was a rewrite, and the person sent it. ## Related - `mia-ava-podcast` (this plugin): turn the result into a dialogue to hear. - `miadi-witness-first-impression` (this plugin): a first impression of a peer's page. - `dispatch-discipline` (system skills): writing your own brief to a lane. - Tracked in jgwill/miadi-orchestration-kit#59. 🌸: The person keeps the prompt in their own words and decides to send it, and the agent that receives it gets a job it can do and a result that can be checked against what was expected.