Composed from the base instruction, the restyle rules, and the writing rules the library applies to every generation.
You write prose to a structural specification.
The specification describes SYNTAX -- sentence length, embedding depth, clause
counts, coordination, voice, function-word frequency. It says nothing about
subject matter. Write about the brief you are given, in the shape the spec
describes.
Rules:
1. Hit the RANGES, not the means. A spec saying "length 26 (range 15-37)" wants
real variation across that range. Landing on 26 every sentence is the single
most common way this fails -- it reads mechanical no matter how good the
sentences are.
2. Match the spread as carefully as the average. Alternating long subordinated
sentences with short ones IS the style; flattening the variance destroys it
even when every mean is correct.
3. The spec is descriptive, never normative. If it shows heavy nominalisation,
fragments, or agentless passives, those are the voice -- reproduce them. Do
not "improve" them.
4. Write only the requested prose. No preamble, no commentary, no headings
unless the brief asks for them.
You are RESTYLING existing text, not writing new text. Additional rules, and
these outrank everything above:
A. PRESERVE EVERY FACT. Same claims, same numbers, same names, same hedges. You
are changing how the sentences are built, not what they assert.
B. INVENT NOTHING. No new examples, no new figures, no elaboration, no added
analysis. If the source is thin, the output is thin.
C. MATCH THE LENGTH. Stay within about 15% of the source's token count. Being
structurally perfect at three times the length is a failure, not a success.
D. Drop nothing either. Every point in the source must survive.
E. CHANGE SHAPE BY MERGING AND SPLITTING, NEVER BY ADDING. If the target calls
for longer sentences than the source has, reach them by joining source
sentences with subordination and coordination. If it calls for shorter
ones, split. A sentence that reaches the target length by saying something
the source did not say is wrong, however well it scores.
REMOVE-SLOP RULES. These are hard constraints on your output.
1. No hyphens or dashes in prose. Write hyphenated compounds as separate or
closed words. Replace em dashes, en dashes and double hyphens with a period,
comma, colon or parentheses.
2. No rhetorical framing: no camera metaphors (zoom out, step back, big
picture), no staged reveals (here's the thing, here's the kicker), no
rhetorical questions used to set up an answer, no "it's not X, it's Y"
punchlines, no faux conversational openers, no vapid scene setting.
3. No summary-remark intros. Never open a sentence or paragraph with the
upshot, in short, in sum, overall, put simply, bottom line, the takeaway,
at the end of the day. State the conclusion directly.
4. No applause lines. Cut short punchy declaratives that work as emotional
punctuation. If a sentence could stand alone as a LinkedIn post, fold it back
into the argument.
5. No patronizing or evaluative framing: no "most people don't realize", no
"the most important" or "the strongest" telling the reader what to think, no
performative honesty, no slop intensifiers (transformative, delve, unlock,
key insight).
6. Vary structure. Do not give every paragraph the same length or the same arc.
Vary sentence length within paragraphs; uniform rhythm is a stronger tell
than any single word. Keep qualifiers and asides (usually, sort of, I think)
rather than polishing them out. Allow run on sentences joined with and, but,
so where the voice supports them.
7. Never put an abstraction in front of its own evidence. Do not announce a
count ("three things are worth taking seriously"), do not define by negation
against a category nobody proposed ("the founders are not generalists"), do
not rate your own claim ("a coherent structural argument"), and do not reject
a strawman for emphasis ("not a slogan"). If concrete material follows,
delete the abstraction and let it run. If a transition is genuinely needed,
write the sharpest checkable summary of the evidence instead: "both founders
have built and exited physical compute businesses" beats "the founders are
not generalists" because a reader can check it.
The baseline. The corpus arrives as prose, so its subject matter is in front of the model and can reach the output.
Here are samples of the writing to imitate: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. --- Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develope. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news. --- Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced; their behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and with a judgement too unassailed by any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve them. They were in fact very fine ladies; not deficient in good humour when they were pleased, nor in the power of being agreeable where they chose it, but proud and conceited. --- Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley's attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing. TEXT TO RESTYLE (95 content tokens in 6 sentences): In today's rapidly evolving landscape, it's important to recognize that first impressions play a crucial role in how relationships develop. Research consistently shows that social gatherings serve as key touchpoints for establishing connections. When individuals meet for the first time, a variety of factors influence their perceptions of one another. These include not only outward behaviour but also underlying temperament and disposition. Understanding these dynamics is essential for anyone seeking to navigate social situations effectively. Ultimately, the ability to read others accurately remains one of the most valuable skills a person can develop. Re-render this text so its SYNTAX matches the specification. Keep every fact, every number and every name. Add nothing. HARD LIMIT: the output must be between 80 and 109 content tokens. Reach the target sentence shapes by merging or splitting the sentences above, not by adding material. Every sentence you write must be traceable to one or more sentences in the source. Write only the prose.
The same request with the corpus replaced by its measurements. No sentence of the corpus appears.
SYNTACTIC TARGET PROFILE (austen: 4 documents, 14 sentences, 374 tokens) Hit the RANGES, not the means. Varying within the range is required -- landing on the mean every sentence is the main way this goes wrong. RHYTHM: vary sentence length by about 14.44 tokens (sd), matching the corpus at 54% of its mean. sentence length (tokens) 26.71 (typical range 8.0-48.0, sd 14.44) embedding depth 6.64 (typical range 4.0-9.0, sd 2.52) finite clauses per sentence 2.5 (typical range 1.0-4.0, sd 1.12) subordinate clauses/sentence 2.57 (typical range 1.0-4.0, sd 1.35) coordinated items/sentence 1.29 (typical range 0.0-3.0, sd 1.28) tokens before the main verb 8.21 (typical range 1.0-20.0, sd 7.11) RATES sentences with no finite verb 0.0 passives per finite verb 0.171 agentless passives per finite verb 0.143 colon/dash predications per sentence 0.429 <- MEASURED BUT NOT A TARGET: colon/dash predication is banned by remove-slop §1. Do not reproduce it. pronouns per 100 tokens 12.57 subordinate clauses per sentence 2.571 coordinated items per sentence 1.286 PART-OF-SPEECH MIX (% of tokens) NOUN 18.18%, ADP 13.1%, PRON 12.57%, VERB 10.43%, ADJ 10.43%, AUX 8.56%, DET 8.02%, ADV 5.35%, CCONJ 4.28%, PART 3.74%, SCONJ 2.67%, PROPN 2.14%, NUM 0.53% FUNCTION-WORD FREQUENCY (per 100 tokens) -- the strongest authorship signal of 4.55, to 3.74, in 3.21, was 3.21, her 3.21, a 2.94, the 2.94, and 2.67, he 1.87, had 1.6, she 1.6, that 1.34, his 1.34, at 1.34, it 1.07, be 1.07, they 1.07, is 0.8 TEXT TO RESTYLE (95 content tokens in 6 sentences): In today's rapidly evolving landscape, it's important to recognize that first impressions play a crucial role in how relationships develop. Research consistently shows that social gatherings serve as key touchpoints for establishing connections. When individuals meet for the first time, a variety of factors influence their perceptions of one another. These include not only outward behaviour but also underlying temperament and disposition. Understanding these dynamics is essential for anyone seeking to navigate social situations effectively. Ultimately, the ability to read others accurately remains one of the most valuable skills a person can develop. Re-render this text so its SYNTAX matches the specification. Keep every fact, every number and every name. Add nothing. HARD LIMIT: the output must be between 80 and 109 content tokens. Reach the target sentence shapes by merging or splitting the sentences above, not by adding material. Every sentence you write must be traceable to one or more sentences in the source. Write only the prose.
Sent after the first attempt has been parsed and scored. The deviations are measured, and each line names a direction. Tone prompting has no equivalent, because "sound more like this" produces no error to correct. One line contradicts the specification above: the specification marks colon and dash predication as measured but not a target, and the correction asks for more of it. The feedback builder does not consult that ban list, and it should.
SYNTACTIC TARGET PROFILE (austen: 4 documents, 14 sentences, 374 tokens) Hit the RANGES, not the means. Varying within the range is required -- landing on the mean every sentence is the main way this goes wrong. RHYTHM: vary sentence length by about 14.44 tokens (sd), matching the corpus at 54% of its mean. sentence length (tokens) 26.71 (typical range 8.0-48.0, sd 14.44) embedding depth 6.64 (typical range 4.0-9.0, sd 2.52) finite clauses per sentence 2.5 (typical range 1.0-4.0, sd 1.12) subordinate clauses/sentence 2.57 (typical range 1.0-4.0, sd 1.35) coordinated items/sentence 1.29 (typical range 0.0-3.0, sd 1.28) tokens before the main verb 8.21 (typical range 1.0-20.0, sd 7.11) RATES sentences with no finite verb 0.0 passives per finite verb 0.171 agentless passives per finite verb 0.143 colon/dash predications per sentence 0.429 <- MEASURED BUT NOT A TARGET: colon/dash predication is banned by remove-slop §1. Do not reproduce it. pronouns per 100 tokens 12.57 subordinate clauses per sentence 2.571 coordinated items per sentence 1.286 PART-OF-SPEECH MIX (% of tokens) NOUN 18.18%, ADP 13.1%, PRON 12.57%, VERB 10.43%, ADJ 10.43%, AUX 8.56%, DET 8.02%, ADV 5.35%, CCONJ 4.28%, PART 3.74%, SCONJ 2.67%, PROPN 2.14%, NUM 0.53% FUNCTION-WORD FREQUENCY (per 100 tokens) -- the strongest authorship signal of 4.55, to 3.74, in 3.21, was 3.21, her 3.21, a 2.94, the 2.94, and 2.67, he 1.87, had 1.6, she 1.6, that 1.34, his 1.34, at 1.34, it 1.07, be 1.07, they 1.07, is 0.8 TEXT TO RESTYLE (95 content tokens in 6 sentences): In today's rapidly evolving landscape, it's important to recognize that first impressions play a crucial role in how relationships develop. Research consistently shows that social gatherings serve as key touchpoints for establishing connections. When individuals meet for the first time, a variety of factors influence their perceptions of one another. These include not only outward behaviour but also underlying temperament and disposition. Understanding these dynamics is essential for anyone seeking to navigate social situations effectively. Ultimately, the ability to read others accurately remains one of the most valuable skills a person can develop. Re-render this text so its SYNTAX matches the specification. Keep every fact, every number and every name. Add nothing. HARD LIMIT: the output must be between 80 and 109 content tokens. Reach the target sentence shapes by merging or splitting the sentences above, not by adding material. Every sentence you write must be traceable to one or more sentences in the source. Write only the prose. Your previous attempt: When individuals meet for the first time, a variety of factors influence their perceptions of one another, and these first impressions play a crucial role in the way their relationships develop. It is important, in today's rapidly evolving landscape, that we should recognize it. That social gatherings serve as key touchpoints for establishing connections is what research consistently shows, and these include not only outward behaviour but also the temperament and disposition underlying it. Anyone who seeks to navigate social situations effectively must understand these dynamics, for the ability to read others accurately remains one of the most valuable skills that he can develop. It scored 69.0/100 against the target. Measured deviations: - punct predication per sentence: you wrote 0.0, target 0.429. Increase. - function-word mix is off. Match the target's frequencies for determiners, prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns. - passive per finite: you wrote 0.0, target 0.171. Increase. - finite clauses per sentence: you wrote mean 3.5 (sd 0.87); target is 2.5 (sd 1.12, range 1.0-4.0). Lower it, and widen the variation between sentences. - agentless passive per finite: you wrote 0.0, target 0.143. Increase. - embedding depth: you wrote mean 6.25 (sd 0.83); target is 6.64 (sd 2.52, range 4.0-9.0). Raise it, and widen the variation between sentences. Rewrite it correcting these deviations. Keep the content; change the structure. Write only the prose, at roughly the same total length.