---
mcp-manifest: auto
name: writer-craft
description: "Manuscript review and writing craft tools grounded in neuroscience-based story theory, professional editing practice, and prose technique. 12 skills covering story architecture, reader engagement, prose craft, point of view, persuasive storytelling, editorial practice, citation style, three levels of manuscript review, and voice mirror (authorial-voice capture + application) — plus a specialist subagent for autonomous deep manuscript review."
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  - name: voice-distil-profile
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  - name: voice-retrieve-conditioning
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    adminAllowlist: true
  - name: voice-record-feedback
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    adminAllowlist: true
  - name: voice-ingest-session-text
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    adminAllowlist: true
always: false
embed: false
mcp:
  command: node
  args:
    - ${PLATFORM_ROOT}/lib/mcp-spawn-tee/dist/index.js
    - ${PLATFORM_ROOT}/../premium-plugins/writer-craft/mcp/dist/index.js
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    MCP_SPAWN_TEE_NAME: writer-craft
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---

# Writer Craft

11 specialist skills for writers, editors, and anyone working with narrative. Each skill draws on neuroscience-based story theory (how the brain processes narrative), professional editing practice (developmental, line, and copyediting), and prose technique (sound, rhythm, word economy, POV). One specialist subagent performs autonomous deep manuscript review.

## When to Activate

The user is:
- Writing fiction or nonfiction and wants craft-level guidance
- Reviewing or editing a manuscript, chapter, scene, or passage
- Building a story from scratch using blueprinting methodology
- Working on persuasive writing, speeches, or advocacy storytelling
- Formatting citations and references in Chicago author-date style
- Seeking feedback on prose quality, POV consistency, or reader engagement

## Skills

### Story & Structure

| Skill | Purpose |
|-------|---------|
| `story-architecture` | Build and analyze internal story architecture: misbelief, desire, third rail, worldview, origin scenes, scene cards |
| `story-blueprint` | Walk a writer interactively through building a story from the inside out using the Story Genius blueprinting method |
| `reader-engagement` | Analyze and teach reader engagement: hooking from page one, urgency, cause-and-effect, setup-payoff, conflict escalation |

### Prose & Voice

| Skill | Purpose |
|-------|---------|
| `prose-craft` | Review and teach prose technique: sound and rhythm, sentence variety, punctuation, repetition, word economy, crowding and leaping |
| `point-of-view` | Guide point of view, narrative voice, tense, person, and indirect narration |
| `persuasive-storytelling` | Guide persuasive storytelling for nonfiction, speeches, marketing, and advocacy |

### Editing & Reference

| Skill | Purpose |
|-------|---------|
| `editorial-practice` | Guide professional editing methods: developmental editing, line editing, copyediting, self-editing, genre-specific considerations |
| `citation-style` | Guide Chicago author-date citation and reference formatting per the Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) |

### Review

| Skill | Purpose |
|-------|---------|
| `review-manuscript` | Comprehensive multi-level review covering story architecture, reader engagement, prose craft, and editorial quality |
| `review-scene` | Deep analysis of a single scene against scene card criteria, engagement principles, and prose craft standards |
| `review-prose` | Prose-level review analyzing sound, rhythm, sentence variety, POV consistency, word economy, and crowding/leaping balance |

### Authorial Voice

| Skill | Purpose |
|-------|---------|
| `voice-mirror` | Capture the operator's voice from their own writing (`human-only` corpus) and condition agent drafts on it. Five tools: tag historical content (operator supplies `format`), distil a per-format style card, retrieve conditioning for a drafting brief (requires `brief.format`), record operator edits as feedback, and capture the current session's turns on demand. Other drafting skills (email composition, Postiz, property-brochure, prospectus) call it transparently — opt-out via `voiceMirror: false` in the calling skill's frontmatter. |

## Specialist Agent

| Agent | Purpose |
|-------|---------|
| `writer-craft--manuscript-reviewer` | Autonomous deep manuscript reviewer — reads a full manuscript or chapter and produces a structured report with inline observations and summary |

The manuscript-reviewer agent operates in its own context window with file tools (Read, Glob, Grep, Write), allowing it to work through full manuscripts autonomously. Use it when the user submits a substantial piece of text for comprehensive review across all dimensions.

## Tools

Voice-mirror introduces five deterministic plugin tools. They route writes through `memory-write` so the graph-write gate stamps provenance on every node.

| Tool | Purpose |
|------|---------|
| `voice-tag-content` | Stamp `authorshipMode ∈ {human-only, human-led-agent-assisted, agent-led-human-reviewed, agent-only, unknown}` and `format ∈ {text, email, social-post, article, note, marketing-copy}` on one or many `:KnowledgeDocument | :Message | :SocialPost` nodes (email threads live as `:KnowledgeDocument {source:'email'}` since Task 321). Bulk-mode for backfill batches. `format` is required — the operator's editorial classification of the content. |
| `voice-distil-profile` | Three modes. `mode='sample'` (default) walks the operator's full `human-only` corpus for the given `format` and returns exemplars + recent edit intents for the agent to compose a style card; cadence-guarded (≥20% growth or ≥30 days). `mode='amend'` (Task 472) reads only `nodeIds` plus the existing `:VoiceProfile.styleCard` so the agent can decide whether named documents move the profile — operator-initiated, no cadence guard. `mode='write'` persists the YAML card; supply `amendedFromNodeIds` to attribute the write to specific documents (bypasses cadence + corpus walk). Trashed nodes are excluded from every walk. Omit `format` on `'sample'` to enumerate all formats in the corpus and distil each. |
| `voice-retrieve-conditioning` | Return `{styleCard, exemplars[]}` for a drafting brief. Requires `brief.format` (one of the six corpus formats). K=5 short-form (`brief.length:'short'`), K=15 long-form (`brief.length:'long'`). Token-budget bounded. Graceful degradation: empty profile → `{styleCard: null, exemplars: []}`. |
| `voice-record-feedback` | Capture an operator edit on an agent draft as a `:VoiceEdit {format}` with a Haiku-summarised `intent`, linked back to the operator's per-format `:VoiceProfile` via `:FEEDBACK_FOR`. Requires `format`. |
| `voice-ingest-session-text` | Write operator turns from the current session as `:Message {format:'text', authorshipMode:'human-only'}` corpus nodes. The agent reads its own operator turns from context and passes them as `turns`. Deduplicates via SHA256 `contentHash`. Invoked on demand by the voice-mirror skill when the operator asks to capture this session's voice. |

The non-voice skills continue to operate via existing platform tools (`memory-search` for knowledge retrieval). Structured choices are still presented as numbered lists in plain chat — the platform has no inline-UI component primitive on the admin / native-CC surface.

## References

Domain knowledge files loaded on demand by each skill. See individual skill files for their specific reference listings.

| Skill | References |
|-------|-----------|
| `story-architecture` | `misbelief-desire-worldview.md`, `blueprinting-and-scene-cards.md`, `origin-scenes-and-escalation.md`, `inner-issue-and-protagonist-goal.md` |
| `story-blueprint` | `blueprinting-process.md`, `blueprinting-exercises.md` |
| `prose-craft` | `sound-and-rhythm.md`, `word-economy.md`, `punctuation-and-grammar.md`, `repetition.md` |
| `point-of-view` | `pov-types-and-voice.md`, `tense-and-person.md`, `indirect-narration.md`, `protagonist-filter.md` |
| `reader-engagement` | `hooking-readers.md`, `cause-effect-setup-payoff.md`, `conflict-escalation.md`, `neurochemistry-of-engagement.md` |
| `persuasive-storytelling` | `audience-analysis.md`, `transformation-framework.md`, `crafting-persuasive-story.md`, `persuasion-case-studies.md` |
| `editorial-practice` | `developmental-editing.md`, `line-editing.md`, `copyediting.md`, `genre-specific-editing.md`, `self-editing.md` |
| `citation-style` | `citation-rules.md`, `reference-list-rules.md`, `journal-article-models.md`, `book-and-chapter-models.md`, `other-source-models.md` |
| `review-manuscript` | `review-manuscript-checklist.md` |
| `review-scene` | `scene-analysis-framework.md` |
| `review-prose` | `prose-review-checklist.md` |
| `voice-mirror` | No external references; the skill body defines the five tool contracts. Developer notes in `maxy-code/.docs/voice-mirror.md`. |
