Writing Style
timmo001/system-bridge
Write commit messages, PR and issue text and comments, docs (README), code comments, and user-facing strings (notifications, UI labels, toasts, error messages) in the project owner's voice: concise…
Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules to ANY prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text.
Install Writing Clearly And Concisely
$ npx skills add Xe/site --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely -a claude-codeProject install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.
$ gh skill install Xe/site writing-clearly-and-concisely --agent claude-codeProject scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Xe/site.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely .claude/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.
Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/
Install the "writing-clearly-and-concisely" agent skill from https://github.com/Xe/site/tree/main/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely into .claude/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "writing-clearly-and-concisely", then confirm the skill loads.Claude Code copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$skill-installer install https://github.com/Xe/site/tree/main/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-conciselyType this inside Codex. $skill-installer <name> installs a curated skill from openai/skills. The installer writes to $CODEX_HOME/skills (default ~/.codex/skills). Restart Codex if the skill does not show up.
$ npx skills add Xe/site --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely -a codexProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.codex/skills/.
$ gh skill install Xe/site writing-clearly-and-concisely --agent codexProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Xe/site.git skills-src && mkdir -p .agents/skills && cp -r skills-src/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely .agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.agents/skills/ instead of .agents/skills for a personal install.
Codex skills documentation · loads skills from .agents/skills/
Install the "writing-clearly-and-concisely" agent skill from https://github.com/Xe/site/tree/main/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely into .agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "writing-clearly-and-concisely", then confirm the skill loads.Codex copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ npx skills add Xe/site --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely -a cursorProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.cursor/skills/.
$ gh skill install Xe/site writing-clearly-and-concisely --agent cursorProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Xe/site.git skills-src && mkdir -p .cursor/skills && cp -r skills-src/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely .cursor/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.cursor/skills/ instead of .cursor/skills for a personal install.
Cursor skills documentation · loads skills from .cursor/skills/, .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/
Install the "writing-clearly-and-concisely" agent skill from https://github.com/Xe/site/tree/main/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely into .cursor/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "writing-clearly-and-concisely", then confirm the skill loads.Cursor copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ gemini skills install https://github.com/Xe/site.git --path .agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely--scope user (default) or --scope workspace; --path is the subfolder of the repo that holds the skill; --consent skips the security confirmation prompt.
$ npx skills add Xe/site --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely -a gemini-cliProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.gemini/skills/.
$ gh skill install Xe/site writing-clearly-and-concisely --agent gemini-cliProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Xe/site.git skills-src && mkdir -p .gemini/skills && cp -r skills-src/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely .gemini/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.gemini/skills/ instead of .gemini/skills for a personal install, then run /skills reload.
Gemini CLI skills documentation · loads skills from .gemini/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "writing-clearly-and-concisely" agent skill from https://github.com/Xe/site/tree/main/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely into .gemini/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "writing-clearly-and-concisely", then confirm the skill loads.Gemini CLI copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ gh skill install Xe/site writing-clearly-and-conciselyInstalls for Copilot at project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Preview a skill first with gh skill preview. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).
$ npx skills add Xe/site --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely -a github-copilotProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.copilot/skills/.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Xe/site.git skills-src && mkdir -p .github/skills && cp -r skills-src/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely .github/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.copilot/skills/ instead of .github/skills for a personal install. Commit .github/skills so cloud agent and code review can use it.
GitHub Copilot skills documentation · loads skills from .github/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "writing-clearly-and-concisely" agent skill from https://github.com/Xe/site/tree/main/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely into .github/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "writing-clearly-and-concisely", then confirm the skill loads.GitHub Copilot copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ npx skills add Xe/site --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely -a opencodeOpenCode documents no install command of its own. Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.config/opencode/skills/.
$ gh skill install Xe/site writing-clearly-and-concisely --agent opencodeProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Xe/site.git skills-src && mkdir -p .opencode/skills && cp -r skills-src/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely .opencode/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.config/opencode/skills/ instead of .opencode/skills for a personal install.
OpenCode skills documentation · loads skills from .opencode/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "writing-clearly-and-concisely" agent skill from https://github.com/Xe/site/tree/main/.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely into .opencode/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "writing-clearly-and-concisely", then confirm the skill loads.OpenCode copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
Facts
- Skill name
writing-clearly-and-concisely- GitHub stars
- 732
- Used in
- 1 other repo
- Token cost
- ~555 tokens
- SKILL.md length
- 278 words
- Files
- 2
- Skills in repo
- 12
- Repo updated
- First seen
- Licence
- Zlib
At a glance
Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules to ANY prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text.
- Works in 3 steps: Write your draft using judgment → Dispatch a subagent with your draft and… → Have the subagent copyedit and return…
- Tasks that involve Commit messages
- SKILL.md covers Overview, When to Use This Skill, Limited Context Strategy and All Rules, plus 1 more section
- Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md
What it does
Writing Clearly And Concisely is an agent skill from Xe/site. Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules to ANY prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text. Makes your writing clearer, stronger, and more professional.
Its SKILL.md is about 560 tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 1 other file (for example `elements-of-style.md`).
It sits in Development, covering Commit messages and Brand voice and tone. The repository describes itself as: The new frontend/backend code for https://xeiaso.net. The licence is Zlib.
When your agent uses it
- Tasks that involve Commit messages
- Tasks that involve Brand voice and tone
Example prompts
- “/writing-clearly-and-concisely”
Workflow steps
3 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.
- Write your draft using judgment
- Dispatch a subagent with your draft and elements-of-style.md
- Have the subagent copyedit and return the revision
What it can do on your machine
Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit ca51680. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.
Tool permissions
Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.
From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.
Runs code
No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.
From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.
Network
No URLs in SKILL.md.
From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.
Credentials
Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.
From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.
Context cost
Writing Clearly And Concisely loads about 555 tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 60 tokens; SKILL.md has 278 words of instructions outside code blocks.
Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.
Safety
Auto-check passed
The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.
Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.
SKILL.md
The full file from Xe/site at commit ca51680, republished under its Zlib licence (© Xe). 278 words, ~555 tokens.
Download SKILL.mdSave it as
.claude/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 1 other file; get the full folder from GitHub.- name
- writing-clearly-and-concisely
- description
- Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules to ANY prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text. Makes your writing clearer, stronger, and more professional.
Writing Clearly and Concisely
Overview
William Strunk Jr.'s The Elements of Style (1918) teaches you to write clearly and cut ruthlessly.
WARNING: elements-of-style.md consumes ~12,000 tokens. Read it only when
writing or editing prose.
When to Use This Skill
Use this skill whenever you write prose for humans:
- Documentation, README files, technical explanations
- Commit messages, pull request descriptions
- Error messages, UI copy, help text, comments
- Reports, summaries, or any explanation
- Editing to improve clarity
If you're writing sentences for a human to read, use this skill.
Limited Context Strategy
When context is tight:
- Write your draft using judgment
- Dispatch a subagent with your draft and
elements-of-style.md - Have the subagent copyedit and return the revision
All Rules
Elementary Rules of Usage (Grammar/Punctuation)
- Form possessive singular by adding 's
- Use comma after each term in series except last
- Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas
- Comma before conjunction introducing co-ordinate clause
- Don't join independent clauses by comma
- Don't break sentences in two
- Participial phrase at beginning refers to grammatical subject
Elementary Principles of Composition
- One paragraph per topic
- Begin paragraph with topic sentence
- Use active voice
- Put statements in positive form
- Use definite, specific, concrete language
- Omit needless words
- Avoid succession of loose sentences
- Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form
- Keep related words together
- Keep to one tense in summaries
- Place emphatic words at end of sentence
Section V: Words and Expressions Commonly Misused
Alphabetical reference for usage questions
Bottom Line
Writing for humans? Read elements-of-style.md and apply the rules. Low on
tokens? Dispatch a subagent to copyedit with the guide.
© Xe, Zlib. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file
Files
SKILL.md and 1 other file in .agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely of Xe/site.
- SKILL.md
- elements-of-style.md
Open the folder on GitHubat commit ca51680
Used in 1 other repository
We found 1 copy of this SKILL.md (exact, near-identical or edited) in other folders, from 1 other GitHub owner. This page covers the copy in Xe/site, which our catalogue first saw on October 7, 2026.
Compare with similar skills
Writing Clearly And Concisely next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.
| Skill | Stars | Used in | Tokens | Auto-check | Licence | Repo updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writing Clearly And Concisely this skillXe/site | 732 | 1 repos | ~555 | Automated safety check: Pass | Zlib | |
| Writing Styletimmo001/system-bridge | 356 | — | ~3.3k | Automated safety check: Pass | Apache-2.0 | |
| Writing Stylepydantic/monty | 8.6k | — | ~3.2k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Agent Stylepchalasani/claude-code-tools | 2k | — | ~1.4k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Writing Styleumputun/cc-thingz | 484 | — | ~1.3k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Writing Styleopen-thoughts/OpenThoughts-Agent | 301 | — | ~1.3k | Automated safety check: Pass | Apache-2.0 |
Similar skills
- Official
Writing Style
pydantic/monty
How to write prose that reads like human technical documentation rather than LLM output.
Agent Style
pchalasani/claude-code-tools
Literature-backed English technical-prose writing rules (agent-style, 21 rules).
Writing Style
umputun/cc-thingz
A skill your agent uses for technical communication - GitHub/GitLab tickets, PR/MR descriptions, issue comments, code review comments, commit messages.
Writing Style
open-thoughts/OpenThoughts-Agent
Marin house writing style. An agent skill from open-thoughts/OpenThoughts-Agent.
Write
waynesutton/markdown-site
Writing style guide for technical content, social media, blog posts, READMEs, git commits, and developer documentation.
More from Xe/site
All 12 skills in this repoStop Slop
Xe/site
Remove AI writing patterns from prose. An agent skill from Xe/site.
Neon Postgres Branches
Xe/site
Choose and create the right Neon branch type for testing and development.
Neon Postgres
Xe/site
Guides and best practices for working with Neon Serverless Postgres.
Conventional Commits
Xe/site
A skill your agent uses when creating git commits, writing commit messages, or following version control workflows
A skill your agent uses when asked to generate a "no way to prevent this" / no-way-to-prevent-this satire post for a memory-safety CVE (out-of-bounds write/read, buffer/heap overflow…
Templ Components
Xe/site
Create reusable templ UI components with props, children, and composition patterns.
Related
Categories
Questions about Writing Clearly And Concisely
What does Writing Clearly And Concisely do?
Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules to ANY prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text. Writing Clearly And Concisely is an agent skill from Xe/site. Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules to ANY prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text.
When should I use Writing Clearly And Concisely?
Writing Clearly And Concisely fits situations like: tasks that involve Commit messages; tasks that involve Brand voice and tone.
How do I install Writing Clearly And Concisely in Claude Code?
Run `npx skills add Xe/site --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely in Xe/site) into .claude/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.
How do I install Writing Clearly And Concisely in Codex?
Run `npx skills add Xe/site --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (.agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely in Xe/site) into .agents/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.
Can I use Writing Clearly And Concisely in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?
Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add Xe/site --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely, .gemini/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely, .github/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely and .opencode/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely in your project.
What does Writing Clearly And Concisely need to run?
SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Writing Clearly And Concisely is instructions for the agent only.
Does Writing Clearly And Concisely access the network?
SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.
Is Writing Clearly And Concisely safe to install?
Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.
What licence does Writing Clearly And Concisely use?
Writing Clearly And Concisely is published under the Zlib licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.
How many tokens does Writing Clearly And Concisely use?
About 555 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 2.2k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.
What are the alternatives to Writing Clearly And Concisely?
Skills that share tags, products or a category with Writing Clearly And Concisely: Writing Style (timmo001/system-bridge, 356 stars), Writing Style (pydantic/monty, 8.6k stars), Agent Style (pchalasani/claude-code-tools, 2k stars) and Writing Style (umputun/cc-thingz, 484 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.
Who maintains Writing Clearly And Concisely?
Xe (a GitHub user) maintains it in Xe/site, which has 732 GitHub stars. The repository holds 12 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 8, 2026.
Source: Xe/site on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.