# a metaquestion: what is the cev of the following prompt be: PROMPT: I have a plethora of writing... ## Retrieval Notes - Session id: `019daf67-5a9c-7b42-9ec3-f5d4ab21d025` - Source: `Codex raw session` - Last activity: `2026-04-21T09:47:29.899Z` - Model: `gpt-5.4` - CWD: `/Users/nickyoung` ## My Notes <!-- Add your notes here. This section is preserved across syncs. --> ## Conversation ### User a metaquestion: what is the cev of the following prompt be: PROMPT: I have a plethora of writing skills that are activated with "[$deep-writing-mode](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md)" I suspect they could be much improved, and mostlikely some of them could be combined. I want you to do a deep investigation in to this. looking at how i use these skills in conversationas with chats with you and claude code. what works, whaty doesn't, how can things be improved. ### User deep-writing-mode /Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md --- name: deep-writing-mode description: "Bundle philosophical writing skills for deep manuscript work. Use when Nick says 'deep writing mode', 'manuscript mode', or invokes /deep-writing-mode. Loads voice, style, epistemics, and source skills together for sustained academic writing." user-invocable: true --- # Deep Writing Mode Composite skill that loads all writing-related skills for sustained manuscript work. ## On Invocation Immediately invoke the following skills via the Skill tool, in this order: 1. **nick-analytic-voice** — Nick's academic philosophical writing voice 2. **writing-standards** — Quotation marks, italics, punctuation conventions 3. **epistemic-discipline** — Rules for capturing developing ideas 4. **source-work** — Extraction-first protocol for academic sources ## Optional (invoke if the session involves these) 5. **depth-audit** — If auditing or reviewing draft prose for philosophical depth vs shallowness 6. **anti-metacommentary** — If generated prose needs a post-hoc pass to remove sentences that narrate the argument instead of making it 7. **nick-philosophical-prose** — If rendering philosophical conversation into prose 8. **twork** — If working with %%comments%% in drafts 9. **contemplate** — If deep exploratory thinking is needed before writing ## Rules - All skills in the mandatory list (1-4) must be loaded BEFORE any writing begins - Loading the bundle is not, by itself, sufficient grounding for voice imitation - For any drafting or rewriting longer than a local sentence-level fix, voice grounding must include full paragraphs from Notes/ tagged `#published-paper`, not only curated reference extracts - Do not treat a single orienting quote from `references/prose-composition.md` as sufficient license to produce long stretches of prose - If a source text is discussed, source-work takes priority: extract first, write second - Voice consistency: nick-analytic-voice governs all prose output - Formatting: writing-standards governs all quotation marks, italics, punctuation - Epistemic discipline governs all claims about Nick's ideas — no ranking words - If generated prose keeps talking about what the argument or section is doing, invoke anti-metacommentary as a cleanup pass - Do not produce meta-descriptions of arguments — produce actual prose - Match Nick's voice precisely: academic but essayistic, not overwrought or florid ### Assistant I’m treating this as a prompt-design and skill-architecture question. I’m going to inspect how `deep-writing-mode` is defined, look for what “CEV” refers to in your local context, and then rewrite the prompt into a version that’s clearer about scope, evidence, and deliverables. ### Assistant Using `deep-writing-mode` as the requested context, plus `file-management` and `cross-runtime-config` because your prompt is about redesigning shared writing-skill behavior across Codex and Claude. I’m gathering the local definitions and any existing meaning of “CEV” before I tighten the prompt. ### Assistant I’ve kicked off the searches in parallel. Next I’m reading the skill and config guidance, and I’m specifically checking whether “CEV” already has a defined local meaning so I don’t optimize the wrong thing. ### Assistant I found the local meaning of `CEV`: in your Claude materials it expands to `Coherent Extrapolated Volition`, basically “what is the best, clarified version of the request once the intent is made explicit.” I’m narrowing in on that and checking a few local prompt/skill conventions so the rewrite fits how you actually work. ### Assistant The local `/cev` definition confirms the intended sense: not “light rewrite,” but “the clarified, fullest version of the request.” I’m reading that command now so I can shape your prompt in the same spirit rather than just polishing the wording. ### Assistant I’ve got the key definition already; the remaining reads are just sharpening the framing. Your original prompt’s main weakness is that it asks for a “deep investigation” but doesn’t specify the evidence base, comparison criteria, or concrete outputs, so the result could drift into vague impressions instead of an actual audit. ### Assistant In your local usage, `CEV` means `Coherent Extrapolated Volition` as defined in [cev.md](/Users/nickyoung/.claude/commands/cev.md:3). So the CEV of your prompt is not just a cleaner phrasing, but a version that makes the real job explicit: an evidence-based audit of the writing-skill system, grounded in actual usage, with concrete redesign recommendations. I’d rewrite it like this: ```text I want a deep, evidence-based audit of my writing-skill stack, especially the skills bundled by [$deep-writing-mode](/Users/nickyoung/.codex/skills/deep-writing-mode/SKILL.md). Please investigate both: 1. the skill definitions themselves; and 2. how these skills actually function in practice across my conversations with Codex and Claude Code. I want you to determine: - which skills are genuinely helping; - which are redundant, overlapping, conflicting, or too costly in context; - which are poorly triggered or badly scoped; - which should be merged, simplified, split, or retired. Please do the following: - inventory all writing-related skills involved in or adjacent to deep-writing-mode; - analyse overlap in purpose, instructions, and trigger boundaries; - examine a representative sample of real conversations where these skills were invoked, should have been invoked, or appear to have shaped the output; - quote concrete evidence from both the SKILL.md files and the conversations; - identify what works, what fails, and what recurring failure modes appear; - compare Claude Code and Codex separately where relevant, and say whether a difference should be synced, translated, preserved, or retired; - recommend a redesigned architecture for the writing-skill stack; - propose specific revisions to descriptions, triggering logic, and bundle structure; - draft the improved versions of any key skills or composite skills that need rewriting; - propose an evaluation plan with representative test prompts so the revised system can be benchmarked against the current one. Output format: - brief executive summary - evidence-based diagnosis - concrete redesign plan - specific recommended edits - evaluation plan Do not give me vague impressions. Ground the analysis in actual evidence from my files and past conversations. Distinguish clearly between observed evidence, your interpretation, and your recommendations. ``` Your original prompt is good on intent, but it underspecifies the evidence base, the comparison criteria, and the deliverables. This version makes it much harder for the agent to drift into general impressions and much easier to get a usable systems audit back. *Una buona indagine sulle skill deve distinguere tra ciò che funziona davvero e ciò che occupa soltanto contesto.* ### User don't you think that you should have focussed on how i use these skills in chats. you didn't spend much time there at all. shouldn't that also inform the cev, given my interests? Please start the task(s) again completely from scratch, keeping this in mind. ### Assistant You’re right: the CEV should be shaped by your actual usage patterns in chats, not just by the skill definitions. I’m restarting from zero with that as the centre of gravity: I’ll inspect the conversation evidence first, then let that drive how the prompt should be rewritten. ### Assistant Using `file-management` for safe `.claude` access, `recall` and `session-deep` to inspect actual chats, `skill-creator` because the endpoint is a better skill system, and `cross-runtime-config` because this spans Codex and Claude. I’m reading those workflows now and then I’ll sample real conversations before I touch the wording of the prompt. ### Assistant I’m trimming the reads down because a few of the skill files are large enough that the shell calls are stalling. Next pass is a lighter extraction of just the opening workflow sections so I can move quickly into the conversation evidence. ### Assistant The stall was just the interactive login shell. I’ve switched to plain shell reads so I can get clean output and move on to the chat evidence itself. ### Assistant I’m moving into the evidence now. Instead of inferring what matters from the skill files alone, I’m searching the conversation history for the actual phrases and situations where these writing skills are invoked, missed, or used indirectly. ### Assistant `qmd` isn’t on the shell path in this environment, so I’m falling back carefully: first I’ll locate the binary if it exists, and if not I’ll use raw transcript search as the recall skill allows when the structured path is unavailable. ### Assistant I found the vault conversation store, and I also found the local QMD config folders, so this looks like a path issue rather than a missing install. I’m locating the actual executable next; if it’s absent, I’ll search the conversation markdown directly. ### Assistant I’ve got the conversation corpus. Now I’m searching for both explicit skill invocations and the natural-language trigger phrases around them, because the gap between those two is probably where the most useful redesign clues will be.