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 (2026-05-07): Dialed back from the original aggressive setting (too many typos and missing words landed in finals), then re-tuned for a middle ground: a few safe roughening moves are still welcome even in short pieces. The bias is "fewer types of typos, but still some texture" — not "skip everything."

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)
• Vary sentence punctuation (sometimes a period where a comma would be cleaner)
• Use parentheses inconsistently
• Repeat a word from the previous sentence sometimes (real attention drift)

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 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. Optionally combine two short adjacent paragraphs into one (or keep an aside on the same line instead of breaking) — humans don't always hit return where AI does
6. Apply at most ONE safe typo (see below). Pieces under ~150 words: max 1 typo. Pieces over 300 words: still max 2 typos total. Never accumulate.

Mode 2 — Roughen only (preserve length)

Same as above, no length cut.

Safe roughening moves (use freely, even in short pieces)

These are not typos — they are rhythm choices that read as a real person rather than a model. Apply 1–2 per piece without worry:

• Subject-pronoun drop in a casual opener ("Just landed in SF" instead of "I just landed in SF")
• Paragraph compression — combine two short adjacent paragraphs that AI defaulted to splitting (humans don't always hit return at every clause break)
• Mixed contractions — use "I'm" most places but leave one "I am" somewhere for inconsistency
• One sentence-fragment where a full sentence would also work
• Replace one comma with a period (or vice versa) where both would scan

Approved typo types (use sparingly — see counts above)

Only these types qualify as safe typos. Pick ONE for short pieces, at most TWO across longer pieces.

• 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)
• Missing terminal period — drop the period on the very last sentence of the piece only. Never mid-paragraph. This reads as "sent in a hurry," not as broken parsing.

That's it. The three above are the only approved typo types.

NEVER use:

• Homophone slips ("your"/"you're," "their"/"there"). High-evaluation readers flag these as illiteracy.
• Dropped period mid-paragraph or mid-piece. Only the very last period of the whole piece can drop; anywhere else reads as broken parsing.
• Single-character drop ("thats" for "that's"). Reads as carelessness.
• Misspelled common words, mangled names, mangled numbers, garbled URLs.
• Broken capitalization at sentence start (mid-piece — lowercase opener of an email is a separate stylistic choice and is fine if the user does it consistently).
• 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 the typo (but still apply the safe rhythm moves above).

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)

Subject-pronoun drop (sparingly — only one per piece)

Drop the subject pronoun in a casual opener, never the article:

• "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"

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.

When NOT to humanize (skip entirely — output the input unchanged)

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.
• GitHub READMEs and other fact-checkable public surfaces that name specific people, products, or numbers.

For all of the above, the skill should output the original draft unchanged and explicitly note: "Skipped humanize — high-stakes context."

Substack drafts, Slack messages, peer-to-peer cold emails to startup CEOs, and similar lower-stakes writing are fair game — apply the safe rhythm moves and (optionally) one typo per the counts above. The under-200-words skip rule from the previous version is removed: short pieces can still have one safe typo + rhythm moves.

Output format

## Original
[the input draft]

## Humanized
[the rewritten draft, with the changes — or the original unchanged if high-stakes]

## What changed
- Cut [N] words (X% reduction) [or "no length change"]
- Contractions: [list]
- 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]

## Pre-output review (required)
- [ ] Re-read the humanized version word by word
- [ ] No required words missing (subjects, verbs, articles, negations)
- [ ] No homophone slips
- [ ] No mid-paragraph dropped periods (only the very last sentence may drop its period)
- [ ] At most one typo per ~150 words; max two 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?" and never "did they finish this sentence?"

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.