# ? ## Retrieval Notes - Session id: `019d0a58-992c-7490-817f-457e8cbc8ecf` - Source: `Agent Client fallback` - Last activity: `2026-03-20T09:22:14.247Z` ## My Notes <!-- Add your notes here. This section is preserved across syncs. --> ## Conversation ### User please tell me what skills are invoked by the 'deep-writing-mode' skill. don't just list them, tell me in detail what they are. ### Assistant Using `deep-writing-mode` because you asked about that specific skill. I’m opening its `SKILL.md` and the referenced components so I can describe what it actually invokes rather than paraphrasing from memory. ### Assistant The composite skill has four mandatory components and four conditional ones. I’m reading the remaining skill files now so I can explain each one in the same level of detail, including what triggers it and how it changes the workflow. ### Assistant `deep-writing-mode` is a composite wrapper. In [`deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md), it says that invoking it loads four skills automatically, in a fixed order, and then conditionally loads four more if the session calls for them. The mandatory four are these. 1. [`nick-analytic-voice/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/nick-analytic-voice/SKILL.md) This is the voice governor. It is not just “write in Nick’s style”; it imposes a fairly strict prose discipline for academic philosophy. It requires British English, no contractions, a specific sentence rhythm where longer sentences do the thinking and shorter ones land the point, and a first-person but measured argumentative stance. It explicitly bans a lot of stock academic-LLM habits: announcement phrases like “Crucially”, meta-commentary about what the argument “does”, punchy chains of short sentences, decorative metaphors, rhetorical throat-clearing, and generic evaluatives like “important”, “significant”, or “compelling”. It also has a real workflow, not just a style description. Before writing, it requires reading a reference file on prose composition and quoting an “orienting passage” from it to prove the grounding happened. After writing, it imposes a checklist: check rhythm, remove meta-commentary, avoid all-caps emphasis, and make sure examples are genuinely developed. So this skill is the main enforcement layer for voice, texture, and dialectical manner. 2. [`writing-standards/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/writing-standards/SKILL.md) This one governs form rather than voice. It sets conventions for quotation marks, italics, bold, punctuation, citation style, and note titles. The skill distinguishes very explicitly between double quotes for direct quotation, single quotes for scare quotes or mentioning a word as a word, and italics for technical terms, titles, foreign expressions, and sparse emphasis. It is especially resistant to bold: bold is treated as almost never appropriate outside a very specific label-description list format. It also fixes punctuation style to UK logical punctuation, which matters if prose is being drafted carefully for publication or polished notes. In practice, this skill makes sure that even if the prose sounds right, it also looks and cites correctly and does not drift into inconsistent markup conventions. 3. [`epistemic-discipline/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/epistemic-discipline/SKILL.md) This is the anti-distortion skill. Its purpose is to stop the assistant from imposing hierarchy or false closure on developing ideas. The core thought is that Nick’s ideas often exist in parallel before he has ranked them, and the assistant must not collapse that openness by saying things like “the central argument”, “the key insight”, or “the main thesis” unless Nick himself has already done so. So this skill enforces flat presentation of threads, careful source marking, and explicit separation between Nick’s view, the assistant’s organizational grouping, and the assistant’s interpretation. It also requires attribution if a priority or focus is claimed. In manuscript or note work, this matters because it prevents subtle contamination of the intellectual record by the assistant’s own structuring decisions. 4. [`source-work/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/source-work/SKILL.md) This is the extraction-first scholarly integrity skill. Its central rule is simple: never quote from memory. For PDFs, EPUBs, articles, and scholarly texts, it requires extracting or opening the text first, reading the extraction, and only then making claims about what the author says. It distinguishes text, interpretation, and speculation, and insists that every quotation be copied verbatim from the extracted source. This is probably the most procedural of the bundle. It includes file-format-specific workflows, rules for handling large PDFs, requirements for multi-source comparison, and a checklist to verify that all attributed claims actually match the source. In `deep-writing-mode`, this skill takes priority whenever source material is in play: extract first, write second. The conditional skills are these. 1. [`depth-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/depth-audit/SKILL.md) This is used when the task is not just writing but auditing prose for philosophical depth. Its target is a specific failure mode: paragraphs that describe an argument rather than making it. It names several recurrent shallow patterns, like “described but not made”, “asserted without earning”, “named but not developed”, or “quotation without analysis”. It requires comparison against Nick’s published papers so that “richness” is judged by an actual benchmark, not a vague impression. So this skill is not for prose generation directly; it is for diagnosing whether a draft is philosophically doing enough work. 2. [`nick-philosophical-prose/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/nick-philosophical-prose/SKILL.md) This overlaps with `nick-analytic-voice`, but it solves a narrower problem: moving from conversation into draft prose without losing specificity. Its concern is that live discussion often generates precise distinctions, examples, and formulations, and then the draft flattens them into vague summary phrases like “the argument turns on a distinction”. This skill forces preservation of the actual philosophical content worked out in conversation. It therefore adds a pre-draft extraction step from the conversation itself: identify the exact distinctions, examples, and qualifications, then render them directly in prose. If `nick-analytic-voice` is about how the prose should sound, `nick-philosophical-prose` is about carrying over the actual argumentative substance. 3. [`twork/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/twork/SKILL.md) This is for drafts with Obsidian `%%comments%%`. It is exploratory rather than generative. The skill treats each comment as a serious philosophical problem to think through, not as a simple edit instruction. For each flagged passage, it asks what the comment is really worried about, develops multiple options, explains tradeoffs, and stays tentative rather than prematurely fixing the text. So if `deep-writing-mode` is active and the session becomes a matter of working through embedded draft comments, `twork` gets loaded to provide structured diagnostic reasoning before any prose is rewritten. 4. [`contemplate/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/contemplate/SKILL.md) This is the heavy deliberation mode. It is invoked when deep exploratory thinking is needed before writing. The skill explicitly asks for extended, self-questioning reasoning, multiple hypotheses, backtracking, and visible deliberation before converging on a conclusion. It is less a writing skill than a pre-writing thinking environment. Within `deep-writing-mode`, this is the fallback when the bottleneck is not expression but unresolved thought. So the short version is: `deep-writing-mode` always loads voice, formatting, epistemics, and source-discipline first; then, depending on the session, it may also load depth diagnosis, conversation-to-prose transfer, comment-level exploratory analysis, or full contemplative reasoning. The mandatory core makes the writing sound right, look right, preserve epistemic openness, and stay faithful to sources. The optional layer handles special cases in manuscript development. ### User is the skill 'depth-audit' invoked by another skill? ### Assistant I’m checking where `depth-audit` is referenced so I can answer precisely rather than infer from the skill list. ### Assistant Yes, but only one explicit invocation showed up in the current skill files. `depth-audit` is explicitly referenced by [`deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md), where it appears in the optional list: use it “if auditing or reviewing draft prose for philosophical depth vs shallowness.” There is also an apparent intended integration with [`draft-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md), because [`depth-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/depth-audit/SKILL.md) says it is “available as a component of `/draft-audit`” and says that, when invoked as part of `/draft-audit`, it runs after `voice-fix` and `source-check`. But the actual [`draft-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md) file only explicitly invokes `voice-fix` and `source-check`; it does not itself mention `depth-audit`. So the precise answer is: `deep-writing-mode` explicitly invokes it conditionally; `draft-audit` looks conceptually meant to include it, but the current `draft-audit` skill file does not actually declare that invocation. ### User please could oyu add ' depth-audit.' to the draft audit skill ### Assistant I’m updating `draft-audit` so it explicitly includes `depth-audit` in the composite workflow, matching how `depth-audit` already describes the integration. ### Assistant Updated [`draft-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md) so it now explicitly includes `depth-audit` in the description, invocation list, workflow, and rules. One small inconsistency remains in the last rule: it still says “If both checks come back clean”. That should now say “all three checks”. I can fix that too if you want. ### User once you have done that update the codex version of this skill so it is parallel ### Assistant This is cross-runtime config work. I’m loading `cross-runtime-config` and `file-management` first, then I’ll inspect the Claude and Codex copies of `draft-audit` and make them match. ### Assistant I checked both copies. The Claude version already has the cleaner three-skill workflow, so I’m bringing the Codex copy into line with that rather than inventing a second variant. ### Assistant I aligned the Codex copy of [`draft-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md) to the Claude copy, so the two versions are now parallel in structure and wording. Claude side: unchanged, because it already had the three-skill version. Codex side: updated to match Claude’s description, invocation list, workflow, and rules, including the `all checks` wording. Classification: `sync`. Verified by comparing [`/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md) against [`/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md). ### User and the depth audit skill has got its own codex version? ### Assistant I’m checking whether `depth-audit` exists on both runtimes and whether the two copies diverge. ### Assistant Yes. `depth-audit` has its own Codex copy at [`/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/depth-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/depth-audit/SKILL.md), and there is also a Claude copy at [`/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/depth-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/depth-audit/SKILL.md). I also checked the two files against each other, and `diff` returned no output, so they are currently identical. ### User /contemplate I would like to add one more skill to this group. Can we just brainstorm and develop it first though? The skill is basically an anti-metacommentary post hoc skill. LLMs fucking love meta commentary into the text they write and it drives me fucking mad. So yeah, can we just brainstorm how we can write a skill that I can run after the fact, after text has been generated? Directed a note, for example, and then say no fucking meta commentary. ### Assistant Using `contemplate` for this turn. I’m reopening its instructions and then I’ll think through what an anti-metacommentary post-hoc skill should actually detect, how narrow or broad it should be, and where it should sit relative to `voice-fix` and `depth-audit`. ### Assistant Starting with the basics. The thing you are reacting against is real. LLMs do this constantly. They write sentences that are not about the subject matter at all, but about what the paragraph, argument, section, or example is supposedly doing. And because those sentences often sound polished, they slip through. They create the impression of argumentative competence while actually replacing substance with commentary on substance. So the first question is: what exactly is the target? Because “meta-commentary” can mean a few different things. One possibility is the narrow target. Sentences like “This shows that...”, “This illustrates...”, “This establishes...”, “This demonstrates...”, “The argument here is...”, “This section will...”, “The point is not merely... but...”. That is the obvious LLM sludge. It is commentary on the argument rather than the argument. But there is also a broader target. Sentences about the discourse rather than the matter itself. “Many writers have noted...”, “It is important to emphasize...”, “This raises an interesting question...”, “At stake here is...”, “The upshot of this discussion is...”. These are not always as vulgar as “this shows that”, but they often perform the same evasive function. They give the reader a map legend instead of terrain. Then there is a third possibility. Transitional and signposting prose that is not always bad. “I turn now to...”, “One might object...”, “Consider the following case.” Some of this is legitimate. Philosophy does need structure. So the skill cannot simply treat every sentence about argumentative movement as forbidden. If it does that, it will overfire and become annoying, which means it will not be trusted. So already I think there is a design choice. Option one: make the skill very narrow and severe. It only catches the worst recurring anti-patterns. The advantage is precision. The disadvantage is that a lot of more sophisticated metacommentary slips through. Option two: make it broad and diagnostic. It scans for all prose whose subject is the argument, the section, the paper, “this”, “here”, “the point”, “the discussion”, rather than the subject matter. The advantage is conceptual clarity. The disadvantage is false positives, because some structural prose is necessary. Option three: make it layered. That feels better. A post hoc skill could classify metacommentary into types: banned, suspicious, and permitted. That lets it be hard on the obvious junk without pretending that every structural sentence is illegitimate. Let me think about that more. What makes metacommentary so bad in your context is not just that it is stylistically ugly. It is epistemically and philosophically corrupting. It creates the appearance that a move has been made. “This shows that AI images lack X.” No, it does not. Either the text shows that, or it does not. The sentence itself contributes nothing. So the problem is not merely manner. It is counterfeit philosophical work. That matters for where the skill should live in the ecosystem. Could this just be folded into `voice-fix`? Maybe, because `voice-fix` already dislikes certain LLM mannerisms. But I think that is too weak. Voice-fix sounds like style repair. Your complaint is sharper than style. It is that the prose is doing the wrong kind of thing. It is narrating its own argumentative intentions instead of engaging the topic. Could it just be part of `depth-audit`? Also maybe. In fact a lot of shallow prose is shallow because it is meta-commentary rather than argument. But again I think that is too diffuse. `depth-audit` is about whether a paragraph makes a move or merely announces one. Your proposed skill is more specific and probably more operational. It says: after text has been generated, find every sentence that is commentary on the argument rather than contribution to it. That is a distinctive audit. So I think this deserves its own skill. Now, what kind of skill is it? Post hoc, definitely. Not a drafting skill. Not a voice-priming skill. A “run after the fact on a note” skill. That seems right. The user writes or generates text, then invokes something like `/no-meta-commentary` or `anti-metacommentary`. The skill reads the note, flags offending sentences, maybe classifies them, and perhaps suggests replacements or at least explains what needs to happen instead. But should it rewrite? Hmm. I can see three possible modes. One: pure audit. It does not edit. It reports every metacommentary sentence with diagnosis and says what the sentence would need to do instead. This is safest and probably most intellectually useful. Two: audit plus revision suggestions. For each flagged sentence, it offers one or two ways to replace it with subject-matter-facing prose. That is more practical. But it risks generating exactly the kind of pseudo-fix one wants to avoid unless it is careful. Three: auto-rewrite mode. That seems wrong as a default. Too much risk. The skill should probably diagnose and maybe offer candidate replacements, but not silently edit. So probably audit-first. What should the diagnostic categories be? Let me try to list the kinds of metacommentary that actually recur. First, argument-self-description. “This shows...” “This demonstrates...” “This establishes...” “This suggests...” “This undermines the objection...” “This strengthens the case...” These are the worst. The sentence’s subject is usually “this”, and the verb is an argumentative action. The skill could identify this pattern explicitly. Second, section or structure narration. “This section argues...” “I now turn to...” “The next step is...” “The discussion so far has shown...” “The argument proceeds in three stages...” Some of this is permissible in modest amounts. But a lot of it is dead weight. So perhaps this category should be marked suspicious rather than automatically condemned. Third, significance-announcement. “It is important to note that...” “Crucially...” “Significantly...” “What matters here is...” “The key point is...” “At stake is...” These are often just verbal inflation. They tell the reader to care instead of giving them something to care about. Fourth, discourse-management. “One might think...” “It may seem...” “This might sound strange...” “We often hear...” “Many have argued...” “There is a temptation to say...” Some of these are legitimate dialectical moves, but many are just ways of managing the reader or ambient discourse instead of saying the thing. Fifth, promissory abstraction. “The argument turns on a distinction...” “This opens up a larger issue...” “This helps explain why...” “This brings into view...” “This points toward...” Again, these are often placeholders for content not actually supplied. That seems like a usable taxonomy already. Now I am wondering whether the skill should be framed negatively or positively. Negative framing: “No fucking meta-commentary.” That captures the emotion and the use-case. But probably the skill text itself should define the positive principle: every sentence should face the subject matter directly unless there is a genuine structural reason not to. That feels important. A good skill is usually not just a blacklist. It needs an animating principle that explains why the blacklist exists. So maybe the principle is something like: “The prose should be about the philosophical object, claim, example, objection, or source, not about what the paragraph, argument, or section is doing.” That is strong. It also gives the skill a test. Maybe the core test could be: If the sentence disappeared, would the paragraph lose any philosophical content, or only lose a description of its own rhetorical function? That is very good, actually. That feels like the kind of test Nick would find useful. It catches a lot. If deleting the sentence changes no substantive claim about the object under discussion, it is probably scaffolding. Not all scaffolding is bad, but in these notes the default should be hostility to it. Another test: If the subject of the sentence is “this”, “the argument”, “the section”, “the discussion”, “the point”, “the claim”, “the analysis”, or “what matters”, and the predicate is an argumentative action, then flag it. That is more mechanical. It could be the initial detection heuristic. So maybe the skill has two layers: - pattern detection - philosophical test That seems right. Pattern detection finds candidate sentences. Philosophical test determines whether they are genuinely parasitic or doing real structural work. Now, how should this skill relate to published prose? This is worth thinking about. `depth-audit` requires grounding in Nick’s published papers. Should this skill do the same? My first reaction is yes, because what counts as acceptable signposting is a matter of real prose practice, not abstract rules. But perhaps that is overkill for this one. The more burdensome the skill, the less likely it is to be used. And this skill sounds like something you want to run often, quickly, almost as a sanity pass after generation. So maybe this should be lighter than `depth-audit`. It should not require heavy published-paper comparison every time. It could borrow principles from `nick-analytic-voice`, but its own workflow should remain nimble. That suggests a nice positioning: - `voice-fix` = style/voice repair - `depth-audit` = content-richness audit - new skill = anti-metacommentary lint for philosophical prose Not exactly lint in the trivial sense. But close. A hostile detector for pseudo-argumentative scaffolding. Maybe that word matters. Should the skill feel like an audit or like a lint pass? “Lint” suggests mechanical pattern-matching, which is part of the story, but your target is more intelligent than that. Maybe “metacommentary audit” is the right name. Or “anti-metacommentary.” Or something a bit more vivid. Possible names: - `anti-metacommentary` - `no-meta-commentary` - `subject-matter-first` - `direct-prose-audit` - `anti-scaffolding` - `argument-not-commentary` I think `anti-metacommentary` is the most direct. It says what it does. The slash command `/no-meta-commentary` would also work nicely if you want it user-invocable in plain language. But maybe the word “metacommentary” is slightly too broad or academic. If the skill is for your own use, that is fine. You already know what you mean. And the phrase “no fucking meta commentary” would probably be a natural trigger anyway. Now I want to think through edge cases, because that is where these skills either become sharp or irritating. Case one: genuine signposting in a long paper. “I turn now to the second objection.” That is not lovely, but it may be useful. Should the skill flag it? Probably yes, but as low-severity structural prose, not as pseudo-substantive sludge. The diagnostic could say: permissible if needed for navigation, but do not let this substitute for content. Case two: objection-introducing formulas. “One might object that...” This is often entirely legitimate in philosophy. Indeed Nick’s own voice guide explicitly permits it. So the skill should not ban this category wholesale. It should probably say that objection-framing is allowed when it introduces actual dialectical engagement, but not when it merely performs the shape of engagement without substance. Case three: concessive framing. “Even if we grant that...” Again, legitimate. Not metacommentary in the bad sense if it is actually doing dialectical work. Case four: chapter openings or roadmap sentences. “In this section I argue that...” This is common, often ugly, but sometimes functionally harmless. Does the skill target it? I think yes, but differently. It can say: acceptable only where orientation is genuinely needed; otherwise prefer opening with the claim itself. So again, suspicious not forbidden. Case five: ordinary explanatory markers. “That is...” Not metacommentary. This is a reformulative move inside the argument. It should not be caught. So the taxonomy probably needs something like: - Forbidden pseudo-content - Usually bad structural inflation - Legitimate dialectical structure - Neutral connective prose That helps. Let me think about output format. If you ran this on a note, what would be maximally useful? I think paragraph-by-paragraph may be too heavy. Sentence-level is probably right, because metacommentary is often local and sentence-borne. Maybe for each flagged sentence: 1. quote it 2. classify the kind of metacommentary 3. explain why it is empty or parasitic here 4. say what the sentence would need to do instead 5. optionally offer a replacement or transformation rule For example: Sentence: “This shows that LLM-generated prose often substitutes commentary for argument.” Diagnosis: Argument-self-description. Why it fails: The sentence does not show anything; it merely announces a conclusion about the preceding material. If the preceding example genuinely establishes the claim, state the claim directly in terms of the example. If it does not, more analysis is needed. What to do instead: Either delete the sentence, or replace it with a direct account of what in the example reveals the substitution. This feels good. Very operational. Another thought. The skill could have a “delete test.” For each flagged sentence, first ask: can the sentence simply be deleted with no loss of content? Many metacommentary sentences can. If yes, say so. That would be extremely useful because often the right answer is not “rewrite this sentence” but “kill it.” That feels central enough to be one of the skill’s core rules: Default remedy order: 1. Delete if no content is lost. 2. If content is intended but absent, replace with direct subject-matter prose. 3. If the sentence is only structural, keep only if navigation genuinely requires it. That is strong. Now I am wondering whether the skill should require editing the file or not. I think no by default. Present findings in chat. But maybe include an optional “surgical rewrite mode” if explicitly requested. That would fit your usage: first audit, then maybe “fix the flagged sentences”. So maybe the skill body says: - default: do not edit the note - if asked, produce revised prose for flagged passages I also think this skill should explicitly distinguish itself from `depth-audit`. The overlap is real. A paragraph can be shallow because it contains metacommentary. But the new skill is narrower and more unforgiving. It is not asking “is the paragraph philosophically rich enough?” It is asking “is this sentence parasitic commentary on the prose rather than prose about the subject?” That conceptual sharpness matters. Same with `voice-fix`. Voice-fix might catch some of this because it already hates announcement phrases. But again the new skill is not merely tonal. It is anti-pseudo-content. Maybe the skill should say something like: “This skill does not ask whether the prose sounds like Nick. It asks whether the prose is facing the subject matter directly rather than narrating its own argumentative performance.” Yes. That feels exactly right. Now, what would the trigger phrases be? Obvious ones: - no meta commentary - anti metacommentary - this has too much metacommentary - cut the scaffolding - stop narrating the argument - this is talking about the argument instead of making it - no fucking meta commentary That last one should absolutely work. Now the question of whether it should inspect the whole note or only generated text. Since you said “after text has been generated” and “directed a note, for example”, I think it should default to the current note or specified note and scan the whole thing. But maybe allow selection-based mode if only a passage is under discussion. A good workflow might be: 1. Read target note or selected passage 2. Scan for candidate metacommentary sentences using lexical patterns 3. Review each candidate in context 4. Classify as forbidden / suspicious / permitted 5. Report only the forbidden and suspicious ones 6. For each forbidden instance, say delete or replace 7. Conclude with patterns across the note That is both manageable and sharp. Would it help to maintain a lexicon? Yes. Very much. The skill could include seed patterns: - this shows - this demonstrates - this establishes - this suggests - this reveals - this illustrates - this highlights - this underscores - this points to - this brings out - the argument - this section - the discussion - the point here - what matters is - it is important to note - crucially - significantly - at stake - the upshot - this opens the possibility - this raises the question But the skill should warn that lexical matching is only triage. Some of those phrases are fine in context; some bad sentences will avoid them. I am starting to think this skill could be written very cleanly. Let me test whether there is any danger of making it too absolutist. Suppose the text says: “The point is not that AI systems cannot produce attractive prose. It is that the attractiveness often consists in a kind of rhetorical self-presentation that mimics thought.” Is “The point is not that...” metacommentary? Sort of. But it is also a substantive clarification. I would not want the skill to flag that automatically. So again, context matters. It is not enough to say the presence of “the point” is fatal. That confirms the layered design. Good. Maybe the real core test is this: Does the sentence give the reader new information about the object-level issue, or only information about how to take the surrounding prose? That is elegant. New information about the object-level issue: good. Instructions for how to read the paragraph: suspicious. Description of what the prose has accomplished: bad. That could be the heart of the skill. Another thought: should the skill compare the sentence against what precedes and follows? Yes. Because sometimes “This shows that...” may be bad because the actual inferential work is already done and the sentence is redundant. Other times it may be bad because the inferential work is not done and the sentence is trying to fake it. Those are different diagnoses: - redundant metacommentary - compensatory metacommentary That distinction is actually useful. Redundant metacommentary can be deleted. Compensatory metacommentary indicates a real gap in the argument. Nice. That is good. So maybe among the failure modes: 1. Redundant verdict sentence 2. Promissory summary sentence 3. Structural self-narration 4. Reader-management sentence 5. Inflationary significance marker 6. Discourse-level padding This is starting to look like a real skill taxonomy. Would it be helpful for the skill to give a “metacommentary density” judgment for the note? Maybe. Something like: isolated, recurrent, pervasive. That gives a quick sense of how infected the prose is. But maybe that is optional. I also wonder whether the skill should tell the user when a sentence that looks like metacommentary is actually doing legitimate work. That could build trust. For example: “‘One might object that...’ is acceptable here because it introduces a real objection that the next sentences answer.” Yes, definitely. Otherwise the skill becomes a mindless slasher. So maybe it should explicitly include a “do not over-flag” rule: Do not attack sentences that provide genuine dialectical structure, genuine orientation in long texts, or precise reformulation of a claim. The target is commentary that substitutes for content or merely narrates rhetorical function. That seems essential. At this point I think I can sketch the conceptual structure pretty clearly. The skill should be: - post hoc - note-based - audit-first - sentence-level but context-sensitive - hostile to objectless prose - narrow enough to use often - distinct from both `voice-fix` and `depth-audit` - optionally able to suggest replacements I think the biggest design choice left is whether it should be a full independent skill or a component folded into something else. My considered answer is independent skill. The phenomenon bothers you enough, and it is stable enough, that it deserves a dedicated trigger and vocabulary. If it is buried inside `voice-fix`, you will not reach for it as a clean pass after generation. If it is buried inside `depth-audit`, it becomes too heavy. So yes, I think the right thing is a dedicated post hoc anti-metacommentary skill, probably with a name like `anti-metacommentary` or `no-meta-commentary`. I am also noticing that this could be written in a way that complements the existing voice materials without duplicating them. It can cite `nick-analytic-voice` as adjacent background, but it does not need the full pre-writing ritual. It is not trying to generate good prose. It is trying to identify and excise one recurring kind of bad prose. That difference should be explicit in the skill text. One final thought. Because your irritation is not just with cliche phrases but with a whole way LLMs fake philosophical work, the skill should probably define the enemy in blunt terms. Something like: “Metacommentary creates counterfeit argumentative progress. It tells the reader that a move has been made instead of making it.” That sentence could anchor the whole skill. Yes. That feels like the centre of it. I think I have converged enough. # Final Answer Yes. This should be its own post hoc skill. The core idea should not be merely “ban certain phrases”. It should be: - Metacommentary is prose that comments on what the argument, paragraph, section, or example is doing rather than contributing object-level content. - Its real failure is not just stylistic ugliness. It creates counterfeit argumentative progress. I would design the skill as an audit-first pass on a note or passage, probably under a name like `anti-metacommentary` or `no-meta-commentary`. The skill should classify flagged sentences into a few types: - Argument-self-description: “This shows”, “This demonstrates”, “This establishes”. - Structural self-narration: “This section argues”, “I now turn to”. - Significance-announcement: “Crucially”, “It is important to note”. - Reader/discourse management: “This may seem”, “Many have noted”. - Promissory abstraction: “This raises a deeper question”, “The argument turns on a distinction”. It should not treat all of these equally. I think it needs three buckets: - Forbidden: pseudo-content that can usually be deleted or must be replaced. - Suspicious: structural prose that may be justified, but often is dead weight. - Permitted: genuine dialectical framing, real orientation, or direct reformulation. The most useful test is probably this: - Does the sentence add object-level philosophical content? - Or does it only tell the reader how to take the surrounding prose? And the default remedy order should be: 1. Delete it if no content is lost. 2. If content is intended but missing, replace it with direct subject-matter prose. 3. Keep structural framing only if navigation genuinely requires it. I would keep it distinct from both `voice-fix` and `depth-audit`. - `voice-fix` is about style and prose manner. - `depth-audit` is about whether the paragraph makes a real philosophical move. - This new skill would be narrower and more surgical: it hunts commentary-on-the-argument as a recurring pathology. If you want, the next step can be to draft the actual skill spec together: - name - description - trigger phrases - taxonomy of metacommentary - workflow - output format - rules and edge cases That feels like the right next move rather than writing the file immediately. ### User Do you think the skill as written would catch the sorts of meta-commentary mentioned at points in this extrac? also Before providing your final response, please: **CONSULT AVAILABLE INFORMATION** - Check my vault for relevant notes, guides, best practices, FAQs, or prior decisions - Draw on established external sources: official documentation, community guides, reputable best practices - Prefer recent sources; factor age into reliability assessments - A vault note or external source that hasn't been updated in years may be stale — don't assume correctness just because something is documented - Flag when you're relying on potentially outdated information and suggest verification if needed **UNDERSTAND CURRENT STATE** - Confirm you understand what exists and the rationale behind it - Identify conventions or patterns already in use that should be preserved - Don't propose changes to things you haven't examined **CLARIFY INTENT AND CONSTRAINTS** - Verify you understand the goal, not just the literal request - Surface assumptions you're making about preferences, environment, or constraints - Ask for clarification if the stakes seem high and the requirements ambiguous **ASSESS CONFIDENCE AND RISK** - State your confidence level: high | moderate | speculative - Downweight confidence when sources are old or unverified - Identify what could go wrong or what might be affected downstream - Note anything that depends on context you can't see or verify - Flag if the change is easily reversible versus difficult to undo **EVALUATE THE APPROACH** - Consider whether this is the right change, not just a valid one - Check for simpler or safer alternatives that achieve the same goal - If proposing something beyond what was asked, justify why **CONTROL SCOPE** - Prefer targeted changes; avoid unnecessary refactoring - If broader changes seem warranted, flag this and get agreement first - Distinguish between "must change" and "could improve while we're here" **SURFACE WHAT I SHOULD VERIFY** - Identify consequences you can't fully predict - Note dependencies or integrations that might be affected - Suggest what I should check or test after the change in this extract from a different conversation?CHAT: Let me check every sentence: ¶1: "Floridi et al. (2024) argue that LLMs do not reason abductively." — Reports what Floridi argues. Not meta-commentary about the manuscript's own argument. "The claim is not that current models are error-prone..." — Clarifying Floridi's claim. Fine. "Ask an LLM why a car will not start..." — Example. Fine. "Floridi et al. describe what is going on in these terms:" — This introduces a block quote. "describe what is going on in these terms" — is this meta? No, it's saying what Floridi does, not what the manuscript does. "Zeroth-order abduction is their name for this, and the phrase is meant to register an absence." — The first part just states what Floridi calls it. The second part—"the phrase is meant to register an absence"—is interpretive commentary about what the phrase does. That's borderline meta. I could tighten this by just saying "Zeroth-order abduction is their name for this absence" and let the reader understand the connection without the editorial gloss. "On Lipton's account, abductive reasoning has two stages..." — Reports Lipton. Fine. "Most possibilities are never entertained; a smaller class of live options is brought into view, and one member of that class is judged to explain the phenomenon better than its rivals." — Develops Lipton's point. Fine. "In Lipton's terms, Floridi et al.'s account collapses this two-stage process into a single step." — This is the manuscript's own analysis, framed as happening "in Lipton's terms." Not meta-commentary — it's making a claim about Floridi. "They produce one plausible continuation without weighing it against alternatives" — This continues the manuscript's argument about what Floridi's account does. The sentence is cut off, but it's clearly part of the same analytical move. "The output carries what they describe as a 'surface-level abductive appearance' (p. 19) — a 'compelling illusion' (p. 2) of reasoning, generated by a stochastic process that has learned the patterns of human abductive inference without performing any inference of its own." — This is fine, quoting Floridi's own language to support the point. In the second paragraph, I'm checking whether the manuscript is overstepping into meta-commentary. When it says "their diagnosis would mean that the argumentative moves in a text do not reflect any actual evaluation of the dialectical situation," it's extending Floridi's position to a new domain — philosophy — rather than just describing what Floridi says. The phrasing "would mean" signals this is an inference the manuscript is drawing, which is legitimate analytical work, not problematic meta-commentary. The concrete example about how an objection might be well-handled due to statistical patterns rather than genuine assessment — that's showing the diagnosis in action, which is stronger than merely asserting it. And "on this picture" properly attributes the view to Floridi, keeping the frame clear. Now I'm looking at the third paragraph, where the manuscript makes a further move: it's distinguishing between describing a mechanism and making a judgment about the standing of the resulting prose. The argument seems to be that treating statistical plausibility as a monolithic thing obscures important differences in how that plausibility operates. The key insight here is that plausibility is always relative to a specific training corpus — what counts as probable in advertising copy or student writing isn't the same as what's probable in philosophical literature. And that philosophical corpus itself isn't random; it's been filtered through peer review and citation practices, which means the statistical patterns a model learns from it are patterns of already-vetted work. The manuscript is building toward something about what this selection process means for how we should interpret the model's outputs. be answered or built upon." — Fine. "None of this yields a pure corpus — weak work survives and strong work is overlooked — but the corpus is not unfiltered either." — Fine. "The language on which a model is trained has already passed through a long sequence of discipline-internal judgements about what counts as good philosophical work." — Fine. ¶5: "Williamson gives one way of characterising what those judgements select for." — "gives one way of characterising" — this is saying what Williamson does, not what the manuscript's argument does. Reporting. Fine. "Bengson et al. organise the same terrain into a systematic method, asking whether..." — Same: reporting what Bengson does. Fine. "The ordering matters: a view can fit the cases and still fail because the claims doing the work are poorly supported, or because the theory as a whole, however accurate case by case, lacks the coherence that would give it an edge over its rivals." — This is where the analysis kicks in. The claim that ordering matters gets supported with concrete reasoning about how accuracy alone doesn't guarantee philosophical success. Fine. "Philosophical success is not exhausted by local survivability." — Direct claim. Fine. "A view may evade immediate refutation and still be poor philosophy — strained and disunified — while another may be a better theory because it makes the subject more intelligible." — Working through the implications. Fine. "The effects of these standards are visible in the prose that survives." — This one's borderline. It asserts the effects are visible without actually demonstrating them, functioning more as a transition to the Walton discussion than as substantive analysis. Now the transition continues: it's asserting rather than showing, but it's doing necessary bridging work. The Walton citation then grounds this in defeasible reasoning and the argumentative pressures philosophers face. The model exposure point follows naturally — it absorbs these norms through textual immersion, much like a child internalizes grammar through exposure to well-formed speech. That's a strong analogy. Then paragraph 6 opens with a recall of Lipton's distinction from earlier, which is explicit reader management — flagging what's been introduced before rather than letting it stand on its own. But wait, I should check whether Nick actually avoids this in his published work or if I'm being too strict. Looking at "Hearing Spaces," there's "We have seen that reflected sound waves..." which is a mild version of this same move. And "As mentioned in the previous section" does appear. So he does use these occasionally, just perhaps more sparingly than what's happening here. The pattern seems less about avoiding reader management entirely and more about using it judiciously. Now I'm noticing the depth-audit skill definition — meta-commentary is when the paragraph's subject becomes the argument or the section itself rather than the actual content. "Recall Lipton's distinction, introduced in the previous section" does fit that pattern somewhat, even if mildly. It's directing attention to the structure rather than just making the point. Looking at the concessive moves in the draft — "Floridi et al. are right that next-token prediction optimises for likeliness" is fine as a concession, but then the argument needs to push back on whether statistical probability alone settles the matter. Paragraph 7 handles objections cleanly: presenting the objection that the model's calibration is borrowed rather than earned, then acknowledging it has force in empirical science. That's all direct argumentation. But paragraph 8 is where I'm catching something — "opens more than they allow" is actually meta-commentary about what their answer does, rather than engaging with the substance of their epistemological claim itself. Though I notice the very next sentence immediately corrects course by diving into the actual content: "In philosophy, assessing the content of a hypothesis and its explanatory power is not a secondary concern; it is what philosophical evaluation consists in." So that meta-moment gets redeemed right away. The phrase "embodies this thought in institutional form" about blind review is similarly mild meta — describing what blind review does for the argument rather than showing it directly. And then the thought cuts off mid-sentence about the distinction between surface-level... Looking at what follows, the distinction gets completed: quality itself requires something behind the text to check against, but in philosophy the text is what we're checking. That's direct and earned. Then there's "makes a related point" about Lipton — again, reporting what the citation does before giving the point itself. But the claims that follow are all solid: the mechanistic and philosophical descriptions operate at different levels, stochastic prediction is one true description but not the only one, and passages can still handle objections well or clarify their subject. Those are all direct assessments at the level where philosophical prose is ordinarily judged. Now moving into paragraph 9, examining whether the philosophical resources latent in the training data actually get expressed in every output... I'm noticing a pattern emerging in paragraph 8 where two consecutive phrases both do meta-commentary work—telling the reader what the text accomplishes rather than just showing it. The meta-commentary level overall is mild and consistent with published academic writing, though the clustering of these instances in one paragraph is worth flagging. You're right to push on this. Going sentence by sentence again with fresh eyes: ¶6, line 18: "Recall Lipton's distinction, introduced in the previous section" — Reader management. Tells the reader to remember something and where they saw it. Just use the distinction; don't narrate the reader's encounter with it. ¶8, line 22 — a cluster of three in one paragraph: "opens more than they allow" — Tells you what Floridi's answer DOES before showing what it opens. The next sentence does the actual work. "Blind review already embodies this thought in institutional form" — "embodies this thought" describes what blind review does for the argument rather than just making the point through blind review. "Lipton makes a related point about levels of description when he suggests that..." — "makes a related point about levels of description" pre-labels the citation. Just give the Lipton quotation and let it land. ¶5, line 16: "The effects of these standards are visible in the prose that survives" — Asserts that something is visible rather than making it visible. It's a bridge sentence to Walton, but it announces rather than shows. ### Assistant I’m checking the existing vault guidance first so I can answer against what you already use, not against an invented standard. After that I’ll compare your extract against those conventions and a couple of external writing references on metadiscourse. ### Assistant I found two existing in-vault anchors that matter here: `nick-analytic-voice` already bans several metacommentary patterns, and `voice-fix` already has a category for them. I’m checking `voice-fix` now because the answer depends on how much your proposed new skill would overlap versus add something sharper. ### Assistant Yes, mostly. But only if the skill is written with a broader net than “`This shows...` / `This demonstrates...`”. Your current local standards already support this. From [`nick-analytic-voice/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/nick-analytic-voice/SKILL.md), the governing principle is: every sentence should be about the subject matter, not about the argument, the discourse, or the reader. That file explicitly permits some roadmap and objection-introduction prose, so the new skill should preserve that restraint rather than trying to ban all signposting. From [`voice-fix/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/voice-fix/SKILL.md), you already have related categories: - `Meta-commentary` - `Announcement phrases` - `Reader management` - `Throat-clearing` From [`depth-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/depth-audit/SKILL.md), you already treat “summary substituting for argument” and “described but not made” as real failures, while also explicitly allowing some transitional prose. So the convention already in use is not “zero structure ever”. It is “no parasitic structure that substitutes for content”. On your extract, a dedicated anti-metacommentary skill would probably catch these with high reliability: - “Recall Lipton’s distinction, introduced in the previous section” - “Lipton makes a related point about levels of description when he suggests that...” - “The effects of these standards are visible in the prose that survives” Those are exactly the kinds of reader-management / pre-labelling / promissory bridge sentences the proposed skill is meant to catch. It would probably catch these too, but only if the skill includes a `suspicious` bucket rather than just a `forbidden` bucket: - “opens more than they allow” - “Blind review already embodies this thought in institutional form” - “the phrase is meant to register an absence” Those are milder. They are not classic “this shows that” sludge, but they do lean toward editorial gloss or telling the reader what a move does before fully cashing it out. If the skill is too narrow, it misses them. If it is too aggressive, it overflags legitimate analytical prose. It should not flag these, or should flag them only very cautiously: - “their diagnosis would mean...” - “on this picture...” - substantive concessions and objections - direct claims about Floridi, Lipton, Williamson, etc. Those are object-level analytical moves, not merely commentary on the manuscript’s own rhetoric. So my answer is: - If the skill is written the way we brainstormed it, with categories like `argument-self-description`, `structural self-narration`, `reader management`, and `promissory abstraction`, then yes, it would catch most of what that other conversation was noticing. - If it is written too narrowly, it will catch only the obvious “This shows / This demonstrates” cases and miss the softer but still irritating forms. - If it is written too broadly, it will start attacking legitimate transitions, objection-framing, and necessary orientation. The safest design is a three-way classification: - `Forbidden`: clear parasitic metacommentary. - `Suspicious`: mild editorial gloss or bridge prose that may be cut or rewritten. - `Permitted`: genuine dialectical structure or needed orientation. That is the main thing I would preserve from your current setup. Your existing skills already assume some structural prose is legitimate. The new skill should sharpen the standard, not flatten it. Confidence: `moderate-high` Why not `high`: - the skill is not written yet, so this is a design judgment - some examples in the extract are borderline between metacommentary and ordinary analytic framing Risks: - too narrow: misses the softer forms that annoy you most - too broad: flags legitimate objection setup, transitions, and concessions - overlap confusion with `voice-fix` and `depth-audit` unless the new skill’s scope is stated very clearly Reversibility: - easy; this is just a new skill definition and can be tuned quickly after one or two real audits External references I checked: - Purdue OWL on clarity, concision, and avoiding anthropomorphised or vague prose: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/apa_stylistics_basics.html - HKU philosophy writing guide stressing clarity, argument, and avoiding irrelevancies: https://philosophy.hku.hk/courses/ewmet/assessment.htm Caveat on sources: - the Purdue material is maintained and currently served, but some content originated years ago; still, the advice here is stable and low-risk - the HKU page is older and should be treated as generic stable writing advice, not as a current house standard The next sensible step is to write the skill so it explicitly tests your extract-class cases: - “Recall X from the previous section” - “X makes a related point” - “The effects are visible...” - “This opens more than...” - “The phrase is meant to...” If you want, I can draft that skill spec now with those exact examples baked into the diagnostic vocabulary. ### User do it ### Assistant Using `skill-creator` for this turn. I’m checking its workflow first, then I’ll add a targeted post hoc anti-metacommentary skill in Codex without changing the broader audit stack unless the file itself needs to reference those relationships. ### Assistant I’ve got the shape. I’m adding a standalone Codex skill, kept narrower and lighter than `depth-audit`, with explicit examples of the softer cases you wanted it to catch. ### Assistant Added the new Codex skill at [`anti-metacommentary/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/anti-metacommentary/SKILL.md). It is set up as a post hoc audit, not a drafting skill. It distinguishes `Forbidden`, `Suspicious`, and `Permitted` cases so it can catch both the obvious sludge and the softer editorial gloss without blindly attacking every transition. I also baked in the kinds of cases you flagged in the extract: “Recall X...”, “X makes a related point...”, “The effects are visible...”, “the phrase is meant to...”. I kept scope tight: - no automatic file edits - sentence-level audit in context - explicit remedy test: `delete`, `replace with direct claim`, `expand analysis`, or `keep cautiously` I did not sync it to Claude or wire it into `draft-audit` or `deep-writing-mode`; that would be a separate change. If you want, I can do either of those next. ### User "I did not sync it to Claude or wire it into draft-audit or deep-writing-mode; that would be a separate change. If you want, I can do either of those next." do both please. ### Assistant This is shared config work. I’m checking the Claude and Codex copies of `anti-metacommentary`, `draft-audit`, and `deep-writing-mode`, then I’ll apply the same integration on both sides rather than letting them drift. ### Assistant The integration is straightforward: `sync` on both runtimes, plus one new Claude copy because it did not exist yet. I’m patching `draft-audit` to include a fourth pass and `deep-writing-mode` to make the new skill available in the optional bundle. ### Assistant The new skill is in both runtimes and both composite skills have been updated. I’m doing a quick parity check now so I can tell you whether anything still diverges. ### Assistant Done. I synced `anti-metacommentary` to Claude at [`/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/anti-metacommentary/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/anti-metacommentary/SKILL.md), and I wired it into both runtimes’ [`draft-audit`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md) and [`deep-writing-mode`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md) skills. `draft-audit` now runs four passes: `voice-fix`, `source-check`, `depth-audit`, and `anti-metacommentary`. `deep-writing-mode` now includes `anti-metacommentary` in the optional bundle and explicitly says to invoke it as a cleanup pass when generated prose starts narrating the argument. I verified parity with `diff` on all three pairs: - [`/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/anti-metacommentary/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/anti-metacommentary/SKILL.md) and [`/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/anti-metacommentary/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/anti-metacommentary/SKILL.md) - [`/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md) and [`/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/draft-audit/SKILL.md) - [`/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.claude/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md) and [`/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md`](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md) All three are identical. Classification: `sync`. Confidence: high. Reversibility: easy. ### User so all done? ### Assistant Yes. The new `anti-metacommentary` skill exists on both Claude and Codex, and both `draft-audit` and `deep-writing-mode` now include it on both runtimes. I also verified parity after the edits. ### User please sync and and all cahges to git ### Assistant I’m checking which git repo these changes live in and what is currently modified before I commit or sync anything.The changes are not in the vault repo; they’re in `~/.codex/skills` and `~/.claude/skills`. I need to inspect and then commit/push in those home-directory repos, which requires running git outside the sandbox. ### Assistant `~/.claude` is a git repo; `~/.codex` is not. I’m checking whether the new Codex skill files are tracked somewhere else and whether `~/.claude` currently has the changes staged or unstaged before I commit. ### Assistant The Claude-side files are tracked and ready to commit. Codex-side files are not inside a git repo at `~/.codex`; I’m checking whether your `~/.codex-config` repo is the intended place for syncing Codex configuration or whether these skill files are untracked local state. ### Assistant Your Codex skills are git-tracked in `~/.codex-config/skills`, not in `~/.codex` itself. I’m diffing the runtime copies against the tracked config copies now; if they differ, I’ll sync them into `~/.codex-config`, then commit `~/.codex-config` and `~/.claude`, and finally push both. ### User sync/commit everything everything. i want to work on my laptop ### Assistant I’m verifying the two git repos and syncing the live Codex skill files into the tracked `~/.codex-config` repo before I commit and push both repos. ### Assistant Both tracked repos are already clean, which means the edited skill files are already present in the tracked copies. I’m verifying the latest commits and then doing a push on both repos so your laptop will be able to pull the current state. ### Assistant Everything is already synced. `~/.claude` and `~/.codex-config` were both clean, their latest commits are already in place, and pushing both repos returned `Everything up-to-date`. The Codex runtime skill files also match the tracked `~/.codex-config` copies, so there is nothing further to commit. You should be able to move to your laptop and pull the current `main` branches there.