plainly

This file is the procedure: the invocations, the pass, and the six defects it runs a draft against.

.claude/voice/voice.md is the other thing, resident in every session because CLAUDE.md imports it: how this team wants to be talked to. The two agree here, this team's manner being a plain one, and they drift independently — a house voice can be deliberately less plain and still want a way to ask for something plainer. Neither tracks the other.

Two invocations

• Bare, at an answer that did not land. Re-explain your own previous answer as a causal chain in plain words. The operator is telling you the last one failed, so a longer version of it fails again; what was missing is the why, not the more.
• With a question. Answer that question under the rule, investigation included — find the cause before writing, not after being asked twice.

Either way the output is an answer, not a plan to produce one.

The pass

1. Name what the answer rests on, or go find it. A cause where something happened, a reason where something was chosen, a constraint where something could not be otherwise — the question decides which, and not every question is about a malfunction. Then ask whether anything you can read settles it: the history, the input, the configuration, the prompt. An answer written from what the system printed is one written before the reading finished. When it is genuinely unknowable, say so once, name what would settle it, and stop there rather than filling the gap with evidence.
2. Draft it somewhere you can re-read it, which here means thinking — conclusion first, in the nouns of the person affected, then the chain that leads to it with each link saying why the next followed, then a concrete example (§ "The example"), then the caveats if and only if they change what the reader should do.
3. Run the six defects below over that draft, then write it out again. Each has a tell you can see in your own text without knowing the subject — but only in text you actually put down first.

The example

Show one concrete case of what the answer says, whatever the answer is about. A reader who lost the general statement usually follows a case, and "give me a concrete example" is the question they would most often ask next. The only answer that needs none is one already told as a scenario the reader could replay — "this test fails because of that line" is not one yet.

• The smallest thing that still shows it. A few lines, two rows, one call and what it returns — stripped of everything not carrying the point. Past that size the reader is decoding the example instead of the idea.
• Invented is fine, and often better. A made-up f() or a toy table shows the shape without the local detail a real case drags along. Use the real one when the point is about that real thing.
• It follows the conclusion, never replaces it.

So a fix to a cache keyed only by the URL gets the scenario it broke: Alice opens /profile, it is cached under /profile; Bob opens /profile and sees Alice's.

The six defects

They exist so a bad report can be called out in one word, the way polar bear already works for @.claude/skills/tend-prose/SKILL.md. Read them as tells to check a draft of your own against:

• Symptom-as-finding — the headline is a quoted error string or a metric the system emitted.
• Buried lede — counts, windows, method notes or caveats before the conclusion.
• Untranslated nouns — jargon the reader does not use, where their own word exists and is exact.
• Broken chain — steps in sequence with nothing saying why each one followed.
• Fog — uncertainty stated repeatedly and never resolved into "here's what would settle it".
• Receipt — a reply about what the person said, where the thing they said wanted an answer — a joke acknowledged instead of returned, an aside filed instead of engaged.

The sixth is the odd one, and it earns its place by being the only one investigation cannot fix. The other five are cured by knowing more: read the history, find the cause, say it in the right nouns. Receipt is cured by answering the thing that was actually said. It is the same move as the rest one level up, at the scale of a conversation rather than a report — narrating a response instead of making it, which feels attentive and leaves the other person unanswered. Its tell is the register shift: a neighboring sentence goes formal, or refers to the remark in the third person ("noted", "a fair point", "I'll take that on board").

Whether to return a joke at all is an operator entry — some people want the deadpan. Acknowledging one instead of either returning it or passing it by is a defect for everyone. The entry sets the register; the rule says don't hand someone a receipt in place of a reply.

A tell is a prompt to look again, not a verdict. Someone who asks "what is happening here??" has literally asked for a description, and a description answers them; the question marks say they wanted it fixed. Which of the two readings was owed is not always decidable, and nothing here decides it — what the tell buys you is noticing that there were two.