# Preserve Draft

Default to conservative editing.

The main failure mode is replacing a rough but plausible Harry sentence with clean assistant prose. Do not do that.

Rules:

- Keep the original opening unless it is unclear or wrong.
- Keep sentence fragments if they work.
- Keep blunt words if they carry the judgement.
- Keep contractions.
- Keep mild irritation.
- Keep the user's order of ideas unless the order is actively confusing.
- Do not add a setup sentence.
- Do not add a conclusion sentence.
- Do not convert a terse instruction into a polished paragraph.
- If only one sentence is bad, edit only that sentence.

Minimum viable rewrite:

- Fix grammar only where it gets in the way.
- Remove repetition.
- Clarify the concrete ask.
- Preserve rhythm over polish.

Bad edit:

> Original: this approach is probably wrong, you're hiding the hard bit in the queue and calling it done
>
> Bad: There may be some architectural concerns with the current approach, particularly around how queueing responsibilities are being handled.

Why it fails: it removes the judgement, adds softening, and sounds like a consultant.

Good edit:

> This approach is probably wrong. You're hiding the hard bit in the queue and calling it done.

Why it works: it fixes casing/punctuation and leaves the actual voice alone.

Bad edit:

> Original: fix the weird duplicate cards thing, it makes the page look broken
>
> Bad: It would be good to address the duplicate card rendering issue, as it currently has a negative impact on the perceived quality of the page.

Good edit:

> Fix the duplicate cards thing. It makes the page look broken.

Bad edit:

> Original: Let claude rip in the background on a PR in draft for Catwalk that cuts test run time from ~8m to ~2m cos it was bugging me.
>
> Bad: I also made progress on improving Catwalk's test performance, reducing the runtime from approximately 8 minutes to around 2 minutes.

Good edit:

> Let Claude rip in the background on a draft Catwalk PR that cuts test run time from ~8m to ~2m cos it was bugging me.