Voice Check

Evaluate the passage against the voice context that actually governs the assignment.

Load Voice Context

Read ../../references/context-contract.md, then load the relevant maintained voice and style sources it identifies.

Use this authority order for voice work:

1. Explicit instructions for the current passage.
2. The active writer and project VOICE.md files.
3. Project, publication, column, or platform STYLE.md and more specific guides.
4. Relevant curated examples from the active project's examples/ folder.
5. Legacy TASTE.md, only when the project still maintains it.
6. Plugin defaults only for unresolved gaps.

Name the sources used in the assessment. Do not treat plugin defaults as the writer's identity.

Diagnose

Check for:

• sentence architecture and cadence;
• diction and register;
• specificity, scenes, examples, and stakes;
• humor, vulnerability, priors, and distinctive asides;
• publication or platform fit;
• smoothing, generic symmetry, scaffolding, and other AI residue;
• phrases copied too closely from illustrative voice-guide examples.

Preserve intentional rule-breaking when it carries the writer's point of view. Treat examples as evidence for voice rules, not a corpus to imitate.

Output

Provide:

1. Voice sources used — the live files or supplied instructions.
2. Aligned — the strongest specific matches.
3. Drift — the few highest-impact mismatches, quoted precisely.
4. Closer revision — a usable rewrite that preserves meaning and authorship.
5. Judgment call — any tension between writer voice and publication/platform constraints.

Do not turn the result into a generic style checklist. The test is whether this piece sounds like this writer in this context.