skills/harry-writing-style-skill/MODES/formal-public.md

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.