prose-revision-skill-ht-anthony-lee-zhang

Prose Revision Skill for Claude

A Claude Skill for revising draft prose — essays, papers, memos, reports — by designing the reader's path through the ideas the author already wants to express. Its guiding principle is idea flow before linguistic flow.

What It Does

This skill treats revision as designing the route a reader takes through an argument, and treats awkward writing as a symptom of a broken route rather than just bad phrasing. When active, Claude will:

• Walk the reader's path — read the draft sentence by sentence as a reader would, checking what the reader knows and expects at each step
• Diagnose leaps, detours, and backtracking — steps the reader can't make, material that pulls them off course, and places they must reread or reinterpret
• Aim for the shortest reliable path, not the fewest words — sometimes cutting a detour, sometimes adding a bridging sentence the author skipped
• Work at every level — sentence, paragraph, section, and whole — fixing the larger route (paragraph and section order) before rewriting inside paragraphs
• Stay conservative on content — preserve the author's voice, substantive claims, and claim strength (no turning "suggests" into "shows")
• Offer revised versions distinguished by how much they restructure (light, moderate, or full rebuild), with a note on the tradeoff
• Leave well enough alone — if a draft already reads well, say so rather than manufacture edits

This is not proofreading. This skill helps put the structure of a rough draft into shape. Proofreading is a late pass for typos and final copy-editing.

Installation

1. Download this repository as a zip file (click Code → Download ZIP above)
2. In claude.ai, go to Customize → Skills
3. Upload the zip file
4. Confirm the skill appears in your skills list and is toggled on

Requirement: Code execution and file creation must be enabled in Settings → Capabilities.

Usage

Just ask naturally:

• "Revise this paragraph for flow"
• "Help me tighten this section — the argument feels tangled"
• "This draft reads awkwardly; can you restructure it?"

Claude will detect the prose-revision context, load this skill automatically, and diagnose the reader's path before touching the wording. You do not need to give any special instructions.

File Structure

prose-revision-skill-ht-anthony-lee-zhang/
├── SKILL.md    # The skill: reader's path, stance, workflow, output style, example
├── README.md   # This file
└── LICENSE     # MIT

Background

Builds on Anthony Lee Zhang's prose-revision skill ("ht" = hat tip), including his later framing of revision as designing the reader's path through the prose. This version adapts those ideas for Claude and adds extensions: structure above the paragraph level, voice and claim-strength preservation, guidance for leaving good drafts alone, and a worked example.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.