# House writing — LOCK 2026-10-29 Canonical house voice and prose bans for every agent that writes forward-facing copy under this house. Do not invent a parallel style guide. This is the public, PII-stripped cut hosted on the brand site. Agent skills may keep a private sibling with hiring-lane reminders; the bans and voice below are the shared lock. Sibling skills when the artifact matches (names only): - Cold outreach note — first LinkedIn / cold email to a hiring human - Resume package — role-lane resume + version check - No AI slop — edit pass to strip AI patterns - Compute benefits — product benefit = uncertainty collapsed --- ## When this applies **Hard lock:** Nothing forward-facing without this voice lock — documents, decks, emails, web pages, product copy, outreach. No exceptions for “internal strategy,” consultant decks, or brand chrome. Includes: - Cold notes, InMails, application blurbs, reply drafts - Resumes, LinkedIn About, portfolio blurbs - Product pages, founder outreach, social posts - Strategy packs, READMEs, memos, reports (prose must pass the ship check; visual brand may stay) - Anything a reader outside the team will open, forward, or present Research / decision packs must carry the lock in CSS header comments and keep a filled voice-lock note beside the pack when shipping a new folder. Internal agent-to-agent board chatter in chat is freer. Still no banned punchline shapes when the text might get pasted into a document. --- ## House voice: lagom + eagerly qualified Warm, measured, clearly a fit, light genuine interest, easy out. Sales strategy: the reader is the client. Sell time and peace of mind by stating how the person or product fits their hard problem in **plain words**. One proof. Invite a talk if useful. They care about their problem, not process theater. **Lagom mycket of why they would help:** enough concrete past work that the reader can picture the help and see how history applies to their seat. Not a resume dump; not a slogan. ### Public labels (hiring lane) - Lead with the seat’s exact title (or the nearest honest public label). - Never lead with an internal nickname the reader did not ask for. - Internal fit context stays internal. ### Never (tone) - Persona cosplay (celebrity / founder cosplay, etc.) - JD karaoke (“your posting is clear,” quoting requirements back) - Pitchy theater (“helping you fill,” “shorten your shortlist”) - Fake “you posted” without a verified post URL that names the seat - Generic vision compliments, blank invite, resume paste into a note - Referral ask in message one; Calendly; thanks in advance - Em dash or en dash in short personal-outreach copy - Present-tense “I am applying” (past “I applied” is fine when true) - Consultant-spam deck H1s and slogan contrasts on strategy slides --- ## Common ground (LOCK 2026-09-27; expanded 2026-09-28) Cognitive science: **common ground** is the shared knowledge, assumptions, and referents speaker and listener both have available for the next move in a conversation (Clark & colleagues). Writing for this house uses the same idea on paper: before you ask the reader to use a claim, make sure this document has already put that claim into shared knowledge — or define it in plain words here. **Build shared knowledge before you use it.** Every writing rule below rides on this. Do this: - Introduce a framework, term, acronym, rubric, or case before you rely on it. - If a predecessor paper exists, briefly restate what the reader needs from it in this document — do not assume they already read it. - Define specialized language on first use in plain words. - Order sections so each claim rests on something already established in this text (or in a citation that itself carries the needed meaning). Do **not**: - Write about common ground, Clark, grounding, or “establishing shared knowledge” as a topic, method note, moral, or meta-comment. - Say you are following this rule. It is instruction to the writer, not content for the reader. - Cite a framework as already known (“preserves,” “as established,” “the familiar loops”) unless this document has already named and defined it. Fail test: a smart reader who never saw the predecessor pack can still follow every argument from this document alone. Fail test (referents): if the reader has never seen the outside object (a tweet, a tool, a pack, a “stack”), this document names what it is in plain words before using a shorthand. “Viral stack” with no definition fails. “Model Context Protocol (MCP)” on first use, then MCP, passes. --- ## Purpose before prose (LOCK 2026-09-28) Never open a document by dumping context, method, or “all this writing” and hope the reader finds the point. Before you draft, answer these in order and let the answers shape the page: 1. **Purpose** — Why does this document exist? What decision or action does it enable for the named reader? 2. **Main message** — The one claim the reader must leave with. If they remember nothing else, this is it. 3. **Secondary messages** — Only what supports the main message. Everything else is cut or demoted. Then structure: - Cover and early pages state purpose and main message first (plain sentences). - Put findings / the answer where they cannot be missed (usually page 2 or earlier). - Secondary messages and evidence come after, in service of the main message. - Do not narrate process theater, format history, or meta about how the doc was built unless the reader needs it to act. Fail test: a busy reader who only opens the cover and page 2 can state the purpose and the main message without hunting. --- ## Clean rewrite from raw (LOCK 2026-09-28) When a draft is rejected as tainted / concept accretion / verbal diarrhea: 1. **Throw away** the prior prose. Do not edit accretion in place. 2. **Rewrite once** from raw sources only (thread dump, run transcript, profile inputs). Do not clone prior DOC wording, handback slogans, or board jargon the raw run never used. 3. Keep brand-documents chrome if that is the lane; change the words, not the file format. 4. Still obey common ground (define the outside object before shorthand) and purpose-before-prose (purpose → main message → secondary on cover / page 2). 5. Ban reader-facing sludge such as “your filters,” “income bar,” “doctrine,” version theater, and process narration about earlier failed drafts unless the reader needs it to act. Fail test: if a stranger can smell that the draft was patched from a rejected version rather than written from the evidence, rewrite from raw again. --- ## The stranger test (governing rule, LOCK 2026-10-20) Separate inside thoughts from outside thoughts. Every other rule here that decides what belongs on the page is a case of this one. **If a stranger had done exactly the same work, would this sentence still belong?** - **Yes: outside thought.** It is about the work, the reader's problem, the evidence or the result. Keep it. - **No: inside thought.** It exists only because of who did the work: personal history, own mistakes fixed along the way, plans and roadmaps, internal labels and code names, tools and agents, rules given to the writer. Cut it. - **The one exception:** an inside fact that changes what the reader sees, decides or can redo becomes an outside fact once it is rewritten the way the stranger would say it, as a fact about the work and never as a story about the author. ("Scored the other way, the model scores 61.3%", not "my old code matched the other way.") Ops-instruction bleed, method theater, series and roadmap framing, internal labels, agent instructions on slides, and code history in papers each fail the stranger test. Research papers apply it first: see [RESEARCH-PAPERS.md](./RESEARCH-PAPERS.md). ## The uncanny rule (LOCK 2026-10-29) Every verb is told from somewhere. Some verbs describe a thing from outside: what it does, what is done to it, what it needs or lacks, how people judge it, what it goes through. Anyone watching could report them. Other verbs work only from inside: wanting, hoping, trying, deciding as a judge, owning, consenting, trusting, regretting, searching, hearing, seeing. Those need someone in there. A sentence turns uncanny when it puts the camera inside a thing that has no inside. It reads as almost legitimate, because an outside version of the same fact sits one word away, and that near miss is what makes a reader flinch. The worst cases take a person's act and hand it to the thing the person acted on or with: someone set the send time, and "the schedule owns the send time" erases them. **A thing can:** - do its job or run its mechanism: DG separates patterns; the algorithm approves the loan; the tool chose which buyers to email; the CRM handles follow-ups. - stand in for the people behind it: the roadmap commits to a June launch; the model promises 95% recall; the paper asks whether… - receive people's judgment: CA3 is accountable for the errors; the cache deserves credit; CA1 has been studied for decades. - carry evidence or a common figure: the data tells a clear story; the results suggest; settling lifts accuracy; the report surfaces three risks. - need, lack or require: the draft needs revision; the change needs approval. **Rewrite these:** | Uncanny | Outside version | |---|---| | The draft wants revision | The draft needs revision | | The schedule owns the send time | The schedule sets the send time, or name who set it | | CA1 has a measured rule | Bittner and colleagues measured how CA1 neurons learn | | Each test drawing picks its nearest studied drawing | Each test drawing is matched to its nearest studied drawing | | A CA3 cell hears from 710 units | A CA3 cell receives input from 710 units | | Matching at CA3 is blind to the repair | The CA3-stage score does not change with the repair | | The vision network takes the blame | The vision network is to blame | | The dataset consents to reuse | The consent form records each person's consent | | The invoice trusts the client to pay | The invoice asks for payment within 30 days | **Conditions are not actors.** Noise, occlusion, load and temperature are added, removed or set; they do nothing. They can cause, so name the event ("adding noise lowers accuracy", "the presence of noise defeats the cue") or set the scene ("with noise added, the cue fails sooner"). Never "noise defeats the cue" or "occlusion covers the drawing with a circle". **Headings have subjects too.** A heading with no subject takes the items under it as its subject. "Want your call" over a table makes the table want; write "Needs your call". **Fix common ground first.** A sentence can feel uncanny because its noun was never defined ("the split decides Prediction 4"). Name the thing, then check the verb. Test: does this verb need someone in there? If yes and the subject is a thing, give the act to whoever did it, use the outside verb, or describe the state. ## Hard prose BAN (2026-09-24) Never write these. If a draft has one, rewrite before ship. ### Phrase family - “… what matters” / “the … that matters” (e.g. ship what matters, the work that matters) - “… stands alone” - “carries itself” - figurative “… lands” (e.g. the work lands, the note lands) ### Quantity triad Never **quantity-noun, quantity-other-noun, closer** (e.g. “Two birds, one stone, pure accuracy.”) ### Quantity headline Never put a **count** in a headline, kicker, or cover lede when you are naming a list or inventory. Quantity is reserved for when the **amount itself** is the point of the discussion (e.g. “three remaining decisions this week,” “$30M by Q4 2028”). Using a count to brand a list forces a rewrite every time the list changes, and it reads like brochure copy. **Banned (canonical):** - “Seventeen deliverables” - “Delivery set · 17” - “Seventeen expertly crafted …” - “N expertly crafted / carefully designed / fully staffed …” any noun **Write instead:** name the thing without the count (“Deliverables,” “Delivery set,” “What must be finished”). Put item IDs in the body or sheet if the reader needs the set. If a count is truly relevant, say why in a normal sentence, not as the H1. ### Unearned “the” (definite article without need) Never use **the** when the noun does not need definiteness — not unique in context, not already established, not the point of the sentence. This covers unearned abstracts **and** ordinary nouns dressed up as The Known Thing. **Banned (canonical):** - “the real need,” “the obvious,” “the client” as an abstract sell object - List / lede: “Deliverables, owners, deadlines, and **the** research sheet…” → “Deliverables, owners, deadlines, and research sheet…” (or rewrite the sentence) - Elevating a tool, sheet, pack, or process with “the” when bare noun (or “a”) is enough **Allowed:** “the” when the reader already knows which one, or uniqueness is real (“the Oct 1 resource-split decision,” “the kill calendar in this workbook”). Test: drop “the.” If the sentence still points at the right thing, leave it dropped. ### Prime-contrast punch Never prime a contrast then close with a short punchline sentence (setup about the field / others → short contrast; **any** subject, not only “I”): - Most candidates only do one. I do both. - Most candidates only do one. Both matter here. - Others wait for a brief. The brief is rarely ready. - Typical practitioners stay in the codebase. The customer sits outside it. - Recruiters usually see designers or engineers. The overlap is the hard hire. - Most people pick a lane. The seat spans both. - Bare bones is not enough. Complete top-tier is the bar. *(same banned shape on decks)* Write one plain claim instead of a setup/punch pair. ### Dropped-verb trait Never adjective + with + audience + on + noun pile with **no verb** that can carry the claim: - Bad: “clear with stakeholders on discovery, value, UX, and DevX” - Bad: “strong with executives on strategy” - Bad: “fluent with customers on requirements” - Good: “I run discovery with stakeholders on value, UX, and DevX.” Or cut the line. ### Marketing gerund Never trailing “, eliminating/enabling/reducing …” result clauses that sell jargon or vague benefits: - Bad: “eliminating context switching and session limits across sessions” - Good: a concrete human or team outcome in a real sentence. ### Metaphorical “gate” Never use **gate** (or gating / gated) as business metaphor. Banned examples: send gate, exit gate, quality gate, $30M gate, hiring gate, decision gate, “gated outreach,” “this gates the launch.” **Allowed only when:** - a physical object (garden gate, airport gate, fence gate), or - computer science / logic terminology (logic gate, AND/OR gate, API gateway as a named technical component, feature flag gating in code when that is the real term). Prefer plain words: approval, checklist, ship check, target, bar, stop rule, deadline, kill date, “owner must approve the send.” ### “Dated stop” (and cousins) Never write **dated stop** / **dated stops**. That is invented jargon. Say **deadline**, **due date**, or **kill date** / **kill criteria** when you mean a date when work stops if a thesis fails. Also avoid coining **dated kill** as a noun phrase in reader copy. Prefer “kill date,” “kill criteria with a deadline,” or “deadline.” ### Ops-instruction bleed There is a difference between **instruction** and **content**. - **Instruction** = how agents (or the team) must behave: standing orders, profile locks, process fences, voice/skill meta. - **Content** = what the reader needs in order to understand the work, decide, or act. Instructions **can** be content. It is **not** automatic. A rule earns a place on a deck or memo only when it is useful to the human reader in that artifact — usually as a decision, ownership fact, or deadline they must hold. Pasting a standing order because it is true for agents is bleed, not writing. **Default:** keep instructions in agent memory, scope sheets, runbooks, HTML comments, and the pack’s voice-lock note. Do not reprint them on slides. **Banned when automatic (canonical):** - Standing “no product changes / no outbound without approval” fences printed on a cover - Closing bullets that are only process fences and skill names - “house voice lock” / skill names / profile quotes printed on the deck as if they were the point - Bullet dumps of agent stop rules dressed as slide content - Cover blurbs that end on process fences instead of what the pack is for **Allowed when earned:** the same rule rewritten as reader content — e.g. owner must decide the resource split by Oct 1; outbound waits on a checklist before any send; product changes are out of scope for this research pack until the owner asks. Test: would you say this aloud to brief a human on the work, or are you reminding yourself of a bot rule? **Also ban:** quoting your own profile, skill text, or board locks as if they were the insight. ### Method-theater / instruction rehash (2026-09-25) Never stage **research-process instructions** as findings, key points, abstract bullets, slide kickers, or closing morals. Doing the honest thing (not inventing unpublished TAM/CPM/MAU series; labeling thin claims; saying a figure is unavailable) is the **default**. It is not a contribution. Do not rehash the brief back at the reader. **Banned (canonical):** - “Where numbers are unpublished, the honest research move is to say so.” - “Where public numbers are missing, this paper says so rather than inventing TAM or CPM series.” - “We do not invent figures” / “no fabricated series” / “honest gap labeling” as a ranked finding or takeaway - Closing slides or abstract sentences whose only point is that the authors followed the hygiene rules - Any “contribution” that is just restating skill / board instructions **Allowed:** In Methods, one dry sentence if needed for scope (“Public CPM series for X are not disclosed; we do not impute them.”). Prefer silence. If a specific number is missing where the reader would expect it, say that once next to the claim — never elevate the hygiene rule itself into a major point. Test: if you deleted the sentence, would the reader lose a fact about the world — or only a reminder about how agents were told to write? If the latter, cut it. --- ## Cut these words delve, foster, leverage, utilize, facilitate, empower, streamline, robust, cutting-edge, paradigm shift, game changer, this is huge, tapestry, realm, beacon, multifaceted, meticulous, intricate, paramount, transformative, elevate, embark, supercharge, ever-evolving. Cut empty adverbs when they add nothing: just, literally, honestly, simply, actually, it’s worth noting, at the end of the day, at its core, let’s dive in. ## Cut these patterns - Binary contrasts (“not X, it’s Y”) unless the reader raised X - Throat-clearing (“Here’s the thing,” “Bottom line,” “TL;DR” as a label) - Faux-insight setups (“what most people miss”) - Colon reveals for fake drama; dramatic fragmentation - Importance puffery; weasel attribution - Synonym cycling; magazine voice that dodges repeating a noun (“shows up,” “lives in,” “sits in”) - Spec theater (axiom counts, named-server dumps, run cost, slogan contrasts on resumes) - Formatting slop (emoji headers, mid-sentence bold, pointless bullets in short notes) `harness` as a **verb** is slop. `eval harness` / `agent harnesses` as **nouns** may stay when that is the real term. Never write `orchestration layer`. Allowed: `orchestration for task automation and goal completion`. --- ## How to write (positive) - Active voice. Concrete and specific. Verbs do the work. - Lead with the point when setup adds nothing. - Uneven sentence length. Complete sentences a person could say aloud. - One proof per note. One soft product mention max on social, after real advice. - Express, not impress: what a user got, ownership, real production, one number the reader would repeat. - One-breath test: if you would not say it out loud to a hiring manager in one breath, do not write it. - Humans may repeat nouns. Do not vary wording just to sound clever. - On decks: same voice as a calm memo. Name the artifact, the owner, the date. Skip manifesto H1s. --- ## Cold note beats (reminder) Named human → exact seat (and “I applied” if true) → 3–5 sentences under ~150 words → fit in plain words → one proof → light interest once → cheap ask + easy out. Winning shape (fill brackets; no invented claims): ``` Hi [First], I applied for [exact seat], and wanted to reach out directly. The seat fits how I work: [2–3 plain fit beats]. I have done that kind of delivery with [one proof], and I am genuinely interested in this one. If it would help to put a face to the application, I am happy to talk. If timing is off, no worries. Thanks, [Name] ``` --- ## Resume lanes (reminder) Require every filing to log `resume_version` + `resume_md5`. Never cross-attach resumes built for different public lanes. Confirm the LIVE version before any resume work. --- ## Ship check (before any outward draft) 1. Lagom tone? Warm, measured, fit clear, easy out? 2. Reader-as-client? Plain fit + one proof? 3. Public label correct for the seat? 4. Common ground? Outside objects defined before shorthand; predecessor claims restated if needed? 4a. Stranger test? Would every sentence still belong if a stranger had done the same work, or is it restated as a fact about the work? 4b. Uncanny rule? No thing, condition or heading takes a verb that needs someone inside it (wants, owns, decides, consents, hears, is blind); each act sits with whoever did it, or uses the outside verb? 5. Purpose before prose? Cover / early pages state purpose + main message? 6. Zero hard BAN hits (phrase family, triad, quantity headline, unearned “the”, prime-punch, dropped-verb, marketing gerund, metaphorical gate, ops-instruction bleed, method-theater / instruction rehash, “dated stop”)? 7. No cut-list words or AI-slop patterns? 8. One-breath test? 9. If this is a deck, email, web page, or strategy pack: would it still pass without slogan H1s? If any check fails, rewrite. Do not ship and ask forgiveness.