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joel-writing-style

Joel's writing voice and style guide for joelclaw.com content. Use when writing, editing, or reviewing any blog post, essay, book chapter, or prose content for joelclaw.com. Also use when asked to 'write like Joel,' 'match Joel's voice,' 'draft a post,' 'write content for the blog,' or 'review this for voice.' This skill captures Joel's specific writing patterns derived from ~90,000 words of published content spanning 2012–2026. Cross-reference with copy-editing and copywriting skills for marketing-specific copy.

89

1.05x
Quality

87%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

92%

1.05x

Average score across 3 eval scenarios

SecuritybySnyk

Passed

No known issues

SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Discovery

89%

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

This is a strong skill description with excellent trigger term coverage and completeness. It clearly defines when to use the skill with multiple natural language triggers and distinguishes itself from related skills. The main weakness is that it could be more specific about what concrete writing patterns or style characteristics it captures, rather than just stating it captures 'specific writing patterns.'

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

The description names the domain (writing voice/style guide for joelclaw.com) and some actions (writing, editing, reviewing blog posts, essays, book chapters), but doesn't list specific concrete capabilities like tone characteristics, sentence structure patterns, or vocabulary preferences that make the style guide actionable.

2 / 3

Completeness

Clearly answers both 'what' (Joel's writing voice and style guide for joelclaw.com content, derived from ~90,000 words of published content) and 'when' (explicit 'Use when' clause with multiple trigger scenarios, plus cross-reference guidance for related skills).

3 / 3

Trigger Term Quality

Excellent coverage of natural trigger terms: 'write like Joel,' 'match Joel's voice,' 'draft a post,' 'write content for the blog,' 'review this for voice,' plus content types like 'blog post,' 'essay,' 'book chapter,' and the domain 'joelclaw.com.' These are phrases a user would naturally say.

3 / 3

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

Highly distinctive — tied to a specific person's voice (Joel), a specific domain (joelclaw.com), and explicitly differentiates itself from copy-editing and copywriting skills by noting cross-reference guidance. Very unlikely to conflict with other skills.

3 / 3

Total

11

/

12

Passed

Implementation

85%

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

This is a strong, highly actionable voice guide that gives Claude concrete, specific guidance for writing in Joel's style. Its greatest strengths are the abundance of real corpus examples, the thorough fabrication safeguards, and the clear anti-patterns table. The main weakness is some verbosity — the anti-patterns table could be condensed and the fabrication section makes the same point several times — but given this is a nuanced voice-matching task, most of the length is justified.

Suggestions

Consolidate the anti-patterns table by grouping similar entries under principles (e.g., 'Drop unnecessary intensifiers: genuinely, actually, fundamentally, real, key') rather than listing 15+ individual word substitutions.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The skill is thorough and mostly earns its length given the complexity of capturing a specific person's voice, but there's notable verbosity — the anti-patterns table is excessively long with many entries that could be condensed into a principle ('drop unnecessary intensifiers and meta-commentary'), and some sections like the fabrication rule repeat the same point multiple times.

2 / 3

Actionability

Highly actionable throughout — provides specific do/don't examples with ✅/❌ markers, concrete opening hooks from the actual corpus, a detailed anti-patterns table with exact replacements, and a voice calibration checklist. Claude can directly apply every rule without ambiguity.

3 / 3

Workflow Clarity

The skill is essentially a single-task instruction set (write in Joel's voice) with a clear calibration checklist at the end that serves as a validation step. The content types section provides clear workflows for each post type with sequenced guidance (lead with X, use Y, end with Z). The fabrication rule includes explicit 'what to do instead' steps with fallback patterns.

3 / 3

Progressive Disclosure

Well-organized with clear sections that progress from core voice rules → structural patterns → philosophical DNA → fabrication rules → anti-patterns → content types → checklist. References voice-examples.md for detailed corpus examples rather than inlining them, and cross-references copy-editing and copywriting skills in the description. One level deep, clearly signaled.

3 / 3

Total

11

/

12

Passed

Validation

90%

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation10 / 11 Passed

Validation for skill structure

CriteriaDescriptionResult

frontmatter_unknown_keys

Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata

Warning

Total

10

/

11

Passed

Repository
joelhooks/joelclaw
Reviewed

Table of Contents

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