Individual skill
technical-writing
Layered technical-writing standard: Diátaxis structure, Google developer style sentences, STE instruction rules, Global English syntax. Use for $technical-writing or when writing or reviewing docs, RFCs, readmes, PR descriptions, or commit messages.
skills/technical-writing/SKILL.md
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- codex Repository topic
- codex-plugin Repository topic
- developer-tools Repository topic
- engineering-workflows Repository topic
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SKILL.mdcore · 9,602 bytesagents/openai.yamlasset · 296 bytes
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# Technical writing
Write so a tired engineer understands on the first read. Apply all four layers.
Three rules sit above the layers:
- **Cut every word that does no work.** If the sentence survives without a word, the word goes. "In order to" is "to". "It is important to note that" is nothing.
- **Use the short, everyday word.** "Use", not "utilize". "Help", not "facilitate". "Do", not "perform". A long word has to buy its length with precision.
- **When a rule makes a sentence worse, fix the sentence another way or leave it alone.** A sentence that follows every rule and sounds like a machine wrote it has failed.
The codebase is the word list. Write the real symbol, file, flag, or command name, not a synonym or a description of it.
Don't invent jargon. Use the words a developer would say out loud: "move", "delete", "a budget that only decreases", not "evacuate", "ratchet", or "endgame". A named pattern is fine when the doc says what it means the first time. Add new offenders to `unslop`'s abstract-metaphor rule with their replacement.
