Simple History Voice

Text for Simple History should read like Pär wrote it, not an AI. This skill covers what is specific to this project. The general AI tells (not-X-but-Y, one-line closers, triads, dashes, inflated claims, sales words) live in the humanizer skill, installed at user level.

Workflow

1. Write the draft following the voice and text-type rules below.
2. Run it through humanizer in embedded mode (return only the final text). For blog posts and newsletters, give it a sample of Pär's writing to match, such as the 5.32.0 release post.
3. Check the result against the banned words in code.md → "Writing Prose".

If humanizer isn't installed, tell the user (npx skills add blader/humanizer --global) and apply the rules below on your own.

Voice

• One developer writing to one reader. Use "I", not "we" or "the team".
• Plain and friendly, a regular nice developer. Not a marketer, not corporate.
• Specific over general: the version number, the real button label, the real screen name ("Simple History → Settings").
• Small honest opinions are welcome ("Technically correct, and no use at all", "I should have caught that earlier"). Never invent feelings, anecdotes or history for Pär. Suggest a line marked "(only if true)" instead.
• Phrases Pär uses himself are his voice, even if they look like AI tells. "genuinely helps" is fine.

By text type

Changelog entries (see the changelog skill). One line each, what changed for the user, no selling. "Weekly email includes a plain-text version." No em dashes.

GUI copy (notices, labels, buttons, empty states, errors). Short and concrete. Say what happened and what to do. Button labels are verbs ("Turn on weekly email"). No exclamation marks, no "Oops!", no em dashes.

Release blog posts (see the release skill, and writing-blog-posts if available). Title: "Simple History X.Y.Z released: ", not a slogan. Open with what changed and why it matters to the reader. Screenshot captions stand on their own: name the feature, link its feature page, mark Premium-only content.

Newsletters and customer emails. Written to one person. No corporate warm-up or sign-off clichés.

Upsell copy (see premium-upsell-design). Name the concrete thing Premium shows or does: "Premium shows which posts were edited and by whom." Never "unlock powerful insights". Don't oversell, and no buzzwords like "forensics".

Commit messages and PR descriptions. Say what changed and why. Don't describe how careful the writing was ("preserved", "ensured", "carefully").

Don't overcorrect

Correct and clear comes first. Keep facts, links and numbers exactly as they are.