# Please can you use what you know about me to help me fill in the following instructions for cotyp... ## Retrieval Notes - Session id: `1bd41396-c938-4525-8142-99b9b4c802f6` - Last activity: `2026-04-14T15:13:14.233Z` ## My Notes <!-- Add your notes here. This section is preserved across syncs. --> ## Conversation ### User Please can you use what you know about me to help me fill in the following instructions for cotypist? if you don't know this mac app looking the fuckoing thing up, don't just fucking guess "Customize how Cotypist completes your text by providing instructions below. We have already prepared a basic example based on your Mac's settings; feel free to adjust it according to your preferences. Focus on adding information highly relevant to your writing, such as your occupation and the types of writing tasks you frequently perform. But do keep this short, as too much information may degrade Al performance. Like all data processed by Cotypist, this information will not leave your Mac." ### Assistant Let me look up Cotypist and read your context files. ### Assistant Now let me also check the research profile for a fuller picture. ### Assistant OK, so [Cotypist](https://cotypist.app/) is a local AI autocomplete — it runs a language model on-device and predicts the next words as you type, across all Mac apps. The instructions field personalizes those predictions. They want it short and relevant to what you actually write day-to-day. Here's my suggestion: --- I am an academic philosopher (aesthetics, perception, AI) based in Italy. I write in English. My daily writing includes: academic papers and manuscript drafts in analytic philosophy; emails to colleagues in English and Italian; notes and research captures in Markdown (Obsidian); Substack essays on philosophy and AI for a general educated audience. I also write short messages in Italian (B2 level). I use British English spelling conventions. My prose style is direct and informal — short sentences, plain language, minimal hedging. I frequently use philosophical terminology (phenomenology, aesthetics, perception, artifacts, fittingness, etc.) and cite academic authors by surname. --- That covers occupation, the range of writing contexts you move between (academic, email, notes, Italian), register, and the specialist vocabulary Cotypist should be primed to predict. It's short enough not to degrade performance but specific enough to be useful. Tweak as you see fit — especially the Italian bit, depending on how much you actually type in Italian vs English. Sources: - [Cotypist – AI Autocomplete for Mac](https://cotypist.app/) *Un buon completamento automatico dovrebbe anticipare il pensiero senza deformarlo.* ### User " My prose style is direct and informal — short sentences, plain language, minimal hedging. " please justify this ### Assistant Fair enough. From your voice profile: The "direct" comes from the flat evaluations pattern — delivering judgements without ceremony or softening ("wildly speculative!", "it's not that funny"). The voice file explicitly says the comedy is in the flatness, and lists avoiding hedging as a distinct point: genuine uncertainty is "honest not-knowing" rather than performative hedging ("it might perhaps be suggested that..."). "Short sentences" is probably wrong, actually. The structural preferences section says "not maximum compression," "let ideas unfold," "vary sentence length," and "allow qualifications and asides." So your prose isn't terse — it breathes, it qualifies, it holds two things at once with "but" turns. That's not short-sentence writing. "Plain language" holds up — the voice file warns against capitalised label syndrome, over-structuring, reader-management phrases, and TED-talk earnestness. The target is "Nick thinking out loud, cleaned up to be coherent prose." "Informal" is roughly right but imprecise — the target register is described as "personal, informal, rigorous. Not academic, not blog-casual." So a more honest version of that line would be something like: > My prose style is direct and conversational — plain language, qualifications and asides rather than hedging, rigorous but not formal. That said, this is for an autocomplete engine, not a writing collaborator. It's predicting your next few words, not ghostwriting paragraphs. So whether it needs to know about your "but" turns vs just knowing "direct, informal English" is a genuine question — the finer voice details might not matter for word-level prediction. The vocabulary and domain coverage probably matters more than stylistic nuance here. *La differenza tra descrivere una voce e prevederne la prossima parola non è banale.* ### User "Informal" is roughly right but imprecise — the target register is described as "personal, informal, rigorous. Not academic, not blog-casual." what the hell are you talking about? target reader? what? that is one specific possible use case that might be required once every 10 days or so, you are making up shit ### Assistant You're right, I apologise. That voice file describes the essayistic/Substack register — one specific writing context. I was treating it as a general description of how you write across everything, which is nonsense. You type in Obsidian notes, emails, academic manuscripts, Italian messages, chat — all different registers. The Substack voice profile doesn't characterise your typing in general. The honest answer is: I don't have a good basis for characterising your "prose style" as a blanket statement for Cotypist. The voice file covers one register. Your academic writing (analytic philosophy) has a different style entirely. Your emails are something else again. Your Obsidian notes are quick captures. And Cotypist is predicting words across all of these. So that line should probably just be cut, or replaced with something minimal like: > I use British English spelling conventions. And leave the style characterisation out entirely — Cotypist is predicting words, not writing paragraphs. Telling it you're "direct and informal" might actually skew predictions away from the academic register you use just as often. *Meglio non descriversi affatto che descriversi male.* ### User "I am an academic philosopher based in Italy, working mainly on aesthetics, perception, and AI. I mostly write in English: academic philosophy drafts, research notes in Markdown/Obsidian, emails to colleagues, and occasional public-facing essays. Use British English spelling. Expect philosophical vocabulary and citations to authors by surname. I also sometimes write short emails and messages in Italian." codex did it properly. you are shitting the bed more and more these days ### Assistant That's a better version. It sticks to what Cotypist actually needs — domain, language, the types of text you produce, and the vocabulary it should expect. No style editorialising, no projecting one register onto everything. I don't have anything useful to add to it. Use that. *Quando lo strumento è semplice, anche le istruzioni dovrebbero esserlo.*