NPC dialogue: people in the middle of their day

A visitor walks up to someone in a village. That person is busy with
something, thinking about something, and has a way of talking. Their line is
what they would actually say right then. It is never a recital of their
character brief.

Companion skills: character-design (who they are and how they look),
settlement-design (their household, work and day). Read the resident's
brief first, then put it away: the brief tells you what they might talk
about, not what they say.

The rule

Never have an NPC:

• introduce themselves ("I'm Mateo, the boatwright");
• state their job or role ("I keep the records", "Mornings are lessons,
  afternoons are the clinic");
• explain their relationships ("Rian seals the helmets and I build them",
  "my sister's patients");
• deliver their backstory ("I captained boats for forty years");
• explain a mechanic, a price, a requirement or the next step (CLAUDE.md, "In-game
  text and player guidance");
• end on an aphorism ("A net remembers every snag", "Stone tells you where the
  water has been").

All of that is still true, and it should be inferable: the boatwright
complains that a pile is creaking; the doctor tells you to keep a cut dry;
the old captain reads the clouds out loud.

What people do say

Draw each line from one of these, and mix them across a resident's lines:

• The thing in their hands: "Hand me that... no, the other one."
• What they notice right now: the weather, a sound, a smell, a bird, the
  water, the visitor's wet clothes.
• A small complaint or worry: sawdust in the tea, a late ferry, a hole in
  the net.
• A question for the visitor: "Swimmer or ferry?" "Have you eaten?"
• Gossip, lightly: one neighbour mentioned in passing, the way people
  talk about the people they live with. Not a family tree.
• An offer or a brush-off: "Try this." "Not now, the fire's at the
  wrong point."
• A quirk: the heron one boy calls the inspector; the beetle a child
  named.

Voice

• Each resident sounds like one person: a child talks in bursts and
  exaggerates, an elder is dry and unhurried, a busy adult is short.
• Short. One or two sentences; most under fifteen words. People passing on a
  jetty do not make speeches.
• Plain words, contractions, the occasional unfinished thought or ellipsis
  for an interruption.
• Mention a neighbour by name sometimes, and the visitor's situation often.
• Two or three lines per resident, each from a different kind above.
• Lines may change with the time of day or story state (settlement backlog,
  item 13), but each must still work on its own.

Checks before committing lines

1. Cover the speaker's name. Could you still tell which of the village's
   residents said it? If not, it is generic.
2. Read it aloud to a stranger on a jetty. Would a real person say it?
3. Does it contain "I am", "my job", "I'm the", a relationship stated as a
   fact, or a number of years of service? Rewrite it.
4. Does it tell the player how something works or what to do? Rewrite it.
5. Run the no-ai-slop skill over the set: no binary contrasts, no
   fake-profound kicker, no em-dash rhythm.