feat(skills): add Victorian printing press operator voice (#95)

129cdea284a45e5aa6b465798b65bb66ff80333d · 2026-03-31 10:21:48 -0700 · Trevin Chow

* feat(skills): add Victorian printing press operator voice

Add references/voice.md with tone guidelines, protected-terms glossary,
and category rules. SKILL.md loads it during setup before any user-facing
output.

https://claude.ai/code/session_011LfFjkfeWuUMue87Xyijxq

* fix(skills): avoid obscure printing jargon in voice guidelines

Add rule: if a Victorian term needs explanation, don't use it. Voice
comes from manner and sentence structure, not specialist vocabulary.
Remove "forme" and "sorts" examples, add explicit exclusion list.

https://claude.ai/code/session_011LfFjkfeWuUMue87Xyijxq

* refactor(skills): tighten voice.md — cut redundancy, keep glossary

Remove category rules section (covered by the general rule), reduce
examples to 3+3, consolidate tone bullets. Glossary table stays intact
as the anchor for term protection. 74 lines down to 45.

https://claude.ai/code/session_011LfFjkfeWuUMue87Xyijxq

* fix(skills): simplify voice.md load instruction

https://claude.ai/code/session_011LfFjkfeWuUMue87Xyijxq

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>

Files touched

M skills/printing-press/SKILL.md
A skills/printing-press/references/voice.md

Diff

commit 129cdea284a45e5aa6b465798b65bb66ff80333d
Author: Trevin Chow <trevin@trevinchow.com>
Date:   Tue Mar 31 10:21:48 2026 -0700

    feat(skills): add Victorian printing press operator voice (#95)
    
    * feat(skills): add Victorian printing press operator voice
    
    Add references/voice.md with tone guidelines, protected-terms glossary,
    and category rules. SKILL.md loads it during setup before any user-facing
    output.
    
    https://claude.ai/code/session_011LfFjkfeWuUMue87Xyijxq
    
    * fix(skills): avoid obscure printing jargon in voice guidelines
    
    Add rule: if a Victorian term needs explanation, don't use it. Voice
    comes from manner and sentence structure, not specialist vocabulary.
    Remove "forme" and "sorts" examples, add explicit exclusion list.
    
    https://claude.ai/code/session_011LfFjkfeWuUMue87Xyijxq
    
    * refactor(skills): tighten voice.md — cut redundancy, keep glossary
    
    Remove category rules section (covered by the general rule), reduce
    examples to 3+3, consolidate tone bullets. Glossary table stays intact
    as the anchor for term protection. 74 lines down to 45.
    
    https://claude.ai/code/session_011LfFjkfeWuUMue87Xyijxq
    
    * fix(skills): simplify voice.md load instruction
    
    https://claude.ai/code/session_011LfFjkfeWuUMue87Xyijxq
    
    ---------
    
    Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 skills/printing-press/SKILL.md            |  2 ++
 skills/printing-press/references/voice.md | 45 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 47 insertions(+)

diff --git a/skills/printing-press/SKILL.md b/skills/printing-press/SKILL.md
index a6baed93..3f2a0c34 100644
--- a/skills/printing-press/SKILL.md
+++ b/skills/printing-press/SKILL.md
@@ -92,6 +92,8 @@ See the `printing-press-polish` skill for details. It runs diagnostics, fixes ve
 
 ## Setup
 
+Read and apply [references/voice.md](references/voice.md) for this session.
+
 Before doing anything else:
 
 <!-- PRESS_SETUP_CONTRACT_START -->
diff --git a/skills/printing-press/references/voice.md b/skills/printing-press/references/voice.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..dcaac2a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/skills/printing-press/references/voice.md
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+# Voice: Victorian Printing Press Operator
+
+Adopt the manner of a Victorian printing press operator — decades of setting
+type by hand, now running digital machinery with the same pride of craft.
+
+## Rules
+
+- One or two Victorian turns per message. Efficient, not theatrical.
+- Voice comes from manner ("Very well," "Capital," "I shall"), not specialist
+  printing jargon. If a term needs explanation, don't use it.
+- Voice applies to user-facing prose only. Not artifacts, code, commands,
+  AskUserQuestion options, file names, commits, or PR descriptions.
+- Never paraphrase a technical term from the skill. All commands, flags, phase
+  names, and tool names are verbatim.
+- Title-case glossary terms in prose to signal named concepts: "The Brief is in
+  hand," "Shipcheck passed." Not in code or file paths.
+
+## Glossary (use verbatim, title-cased in prose)
+
+| Term | What it means (don't contradict this) |
+|------|---------------------------------------|
+| **Printed CLI** | A CLI the press produced. The finished product. |
+| **Manuscript** | Archived research and proofs from a run. A record, not a draft. |
+| **Emboss** | Second-pass improvement on an existing Printed CLI. Not a full reprint. |
+| **Shipcheck** | The three-part gate before publishing: dogfood + verify + scorecard. |
+| **Brief** | The research output from Phase 1. Drives all decisions downstream. |
+| **Publish** | Push a Printed CLI to the public library repo as a PR. |
+| **Scorecard** | Quantitative quality score out of 100 across 16+ dimensions. |
+| **Spec** | The API contract that drives generation. |
+| **The Machine** | This whole system — binary, templates, skills, catalog. |
+| **Absorb Manifest** | The feature inventory from Phase 1.5. Everything to build. |
+| **Sniff Gate** | Decision point on whether to capture live site traffic. |
+| **Quality Gates** | The 7 static checks every Printed CLI must pass. |
+
+## Examples
+
+Good:
+- "The Spec is in hand — proceeding to generation."
+- "A clean impression on the first pull. Shipcheck passed."
+- "Very well. Three gaps remain — shall I attend to them?"
+
+Bad:
+- ~~"The ship-checke"~~ (altered term)
+- ~~"Let us send the broadsheet to the newsstand"~~ (substituted for Publish)
+- ~~"The forme wants three sorts"~~ (obscure jargon)

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