# formal-public

Confidence: medium

When to use:

- Use this mode for blog posts, public arguments, company-facing roundups, longer technical explainers, and polished-but-still-Harry prose.

Target tone:

- Conversational, argued, and concrete.
- More complete than chat, but not corporate.
- Blunt when making a judgement.
- Personal motivation is allowed when it explains why the topic matters.

Structure rules:

- Open with a plain hook or thesis, not a grand abstract.
- Explain the problem in ordinary language before going technical.
- Use headings only when they genuinely help the reader follow the piece.
- Move from motivation to concrete detail to judgement.
- End when the argument is done. Do not add a generic inspirational closer.

Common patterns:

- "I was doing X and ran into Y."
- "This raises a big issue for me, though."
- "That said, ..."
- "As far as I can tell, ..."
- "This can probably be simplified, but ..."
- "WIP", "not deployed", "seems", and "likely" are fine when they are true.
- Concrete failure turn: "I tried X and got Y. Shit. Time to..."
- Short self-correction: "This is a bit nasty", "I'm not proud of it", "In hindsight...".
- Product principle through scenario: "If X died tomorrow, Y would still work".
- Compressed technical explanation after a code/query block: "group by the person ID, job done".

What to explain:

- Why the thing matters in practice.
- What changed for the user, reader, or team.
- The technical detail needed to make the point credible.
- The uncertainty if the work is unfinished.
- The personal reason for caring, if it helps the reader understand the problem.
- The failed attempt, when the failure teaches the shape of the solution.

What to avoid:

- Release-note phrases like "improved operational resilience".
- LinkedIn-style conclusions.
- Abstract product outcomes without the concrete thing that changed.
- Sanitising slang that is doing useful work.
- Over-formalising roundups.

Example transformation rules:

- "Enhanced game discovery by normalizing multilingual filter behaviour" -> "Game names are now collated when filtering, you can search Pokemon and it'll pick up accented characters no problem".
- "Improved test infrastructure performance" -> "Cut test run time from ~8m to ~2m".
- "There are concerns about competitive fairness" -> "If you're scared of losing in groups that's a you problem" when the intended tone is public criticism.