Writing Fidelity

Use this skill as a guardrail before editing or finalizing user-facing writing.
Its purpose is to stop Codex from creating a cleaner-looking substitute that
violates the user's source, constraints, correction history, or requested
artifact.

This is the preservation layer, not the style layer. Use it before or alongside
style work when facts, protected spans, version labels, page/rendered artifact
identity, or user corrections could be lost. Route Chinese natural-prose passes
to chinese-prose. Hand off natural Chinese prose, reader-facing "say it
plainly" rewrites, and ordinary Chinese de-AI/template cleanup to
chinese-prose. When the source is existing Chinese or
Chinese-dominant scientific/technical material and the user asks for
reorganization, structural rewrite, or document-level rewrite while preserving
facts, numbers, formulas, citations, comparisons, conditions, limitations,
paths, commands, or configuration details, hand off to scientific-rewrite
instead of making chinese-prose the main route. Hand off English scientific prose,
evidence-strength calibration, and defensive/self-undermining wording to
scientific-prose.

Hand off product-interface microcopy to product-ui-copy when the target text
is a label, CTA, state, help text, onboarding line, settings explanation,
trust/privacy disclosure, permission prompt, or other short UI copy. In that
route, this skill protects product meaning and escalation boundaries; it does
not become the wording owner.

Non-Negotiable Rule

Preserve first. Improve second.

Do not delete, rewrite, translate, reorder, rename, compress, or normalize
protected content unless the user explicitly asked for that exact operation.

If the user's constraints conflict, report a blocked or partial status. Do not
silently satisfy one constraint by violating another.

Workflow

1. Classify the task: polish, edit, rewrite, summarize, translate,
   layout, render, or source-faithful reconstruction.
2. Extract the user's latest corrections as hard constraints. Pay special
   attention to complaints about deletion, automatic rewriting, language
   changes, title changes, unreadable output, collisions, missing glyphs, OCR
   errors, formula spacing, or prior failed attempts.
3. Mark protected spans before editing. For polish, layout, and
   source-faithful reconstruction, this includes titles, headings, section
   order, labels, numbers, dates, units, formulas, variables, notation, code,
   paths, citations, Chinese/English language spans, user comments, caveats,
   examples, and quoted source text. For explicit structural rewrite routes,
   apply the structural rewrite handoff below instead of treating headings and
   source order as protected by default.
4. Apply only the requested operation. For polishing, preserve substantive
   content. For layout, do not change wording. For OCR cleanup, fix corruption
   without canonicalizing valid source notation.
5. When the deliverable is rendered or formatted, verify the artifact itself:
   page count/size, readable font, glyphs, formulas, collisions, clipping,
   whitespace, and absence of stray QA notes.
6. Before finalizing Markdown, LaTeX, PDF, slides, or reports, check artifact
   authority: title, method name, version label, selected row, final/best
   designation, and visible headline must match the latest user decision and
   evidence ledger. Do not invent lifecycle labels such as start <project> or
   final <project> unless the source explicitly defines them.
7. Finish with precise status and final artifact path. Do not treat reports,
   previews, audits, or side-by-side candidates as substitutes for the requested
   final artifact.
8. For Chinese, Markdown, PDF, slide, or report acceptance, verify readability authority before status: the first visible conclusion must be human-readable, and machine fields, paths, commands, status tokens, and audit trails must support rather than replace the conclusion.
9. If a Chinese Markdown/PDF/slide/report starts with machine fields, paths, commands, status tokens, audit trails, or mixed English process labels before a readable Chinese judgment, classify the deliverable as qa_failed until it is rewritten with a reader-facing conclusion first.

Hand Off

• Use chinese-prose when the main request is "中文说人话", "改自然一点",
  "不要 AI 味", "别像日志", "普通英文能翻就翻", or "别每句话一个 bullet".
• Use product-ui-copy when the main request is to improve product-interface
  microcopy: labels, buttons, CTA/action text, empty/loading/error/success
  states, onboarding, settings help, trust/privacy disclosure, permission
  prompts, browser-extension popup copy, desktop/WebView settings copy, mobile
  UI wording, landing-page interface copy, or locale-specific UI wording.
• Use scientific-rewrite when the user provides existing Chinese or
  Chinese-dominant scientific/technical material and asks to reorganize,
  structurally rewrite, or rewrite the document into clearer Chinese while
  preserving facts, numbers, formulas, citations, comparisons, conditions,
  limitations, paths, commands, configuration keys, or other exact details.
• Use scientific-prose when the main request is polishing English Results,
  captions, rebuttals, slide text, or scientific reports without overclaiming or
  sounding defensive.
• Keep writing-fidelity active as a guardrail when those style passes must
  preserve numbers, equations, citations, paths, headings, user-approved rows,
  final/best labels, or rendered artifact identity.
• Keep writing-fidelity active as a guardrail for Product UI Copy whenever
  product state, eligibility, user consequence, payment, subscription,
  deletion, retention, consent, privacy, safety, external visibility,
  reversibility, required trust/legal disclosure, or exact product/brand/feature
  identity could drift.
• Do not treat "去 AI 味" as detector evasion, source laundering, or permission
  to hide authorship. The allowed goal is clearer prose that preserves facts and
  evidence boundaries.

Product UI Copy Handoff

For interface copy, protect meaning before improving wording. Product UI Copy
may make text shorter, clearer, more natural, or more locale-appropriate, but
it must not silently change:

• who can take the action;
• whether the action is reversible;
• whether data becomes public, shared, retained, deleted, synced, charged, or
  sent to another system;
• whether a state is final, pending, diagnostic, failed, optional, required, or
  unavailable;
• pricing, cancellation, subscription, consent, privacy, safety, legal, trust,
  or eligibility meaning;
• exact product, brand, feature, policy, or technical identities.

If those facts are missing or contradictory, classify the issue as
PRODUCT SEMANTICS or LEGAL/TRUST/SAFETY and ask product/domain/legal
authority to resolve it. Do not launder uncertainty into polished copy.

Frontend Design owns content architecture and rendered acceptance. If the
problem is that text is in the wrong place, too much is visible, neighboring
copy conflicts, disclosure is at the wrong level, or the viewport makes the
relationship unreadable, route that part back as CONTENT ARCHITECTURE instead
of treating it as a wording-only edit.

Version and Label Fidelity

When a document contains dates, months, leaderboard rows, draft labels, model
nicknames, or result variants, preserve the user's intended authority rather
than normalizing names into a cleaner but false story.

• Do not use month, season, stage, or old-draft labels as a substitute for
  the actual selected version. If the best or author-approved row is known,
  name that row by metric, absolute date, and evidence path.
• Do not call a result final, complete, official, best, or the project
  method unless the evidence supports that exact status. Use bounded labels such
  as partial audit, leaderboard row by author rule, draft-only, or
  not verifiable when that is the real state.
• Do not restore stale numbers, stale headings, inactive blocks, or old draft
  labels just because they are polished or familiar. Prefer the latest explicit
  user decision and the best-supported evidence.
• When two rows are both permissible, distinguish the best row from an alternate
  historical row; do not hide that distinction behind month shorthand.
• A report, audit note, preview, candidate output, old draft, or side-by-side comparison is not the final deliverable unless the user explicitly selected it as final. Name the selected artifact and the authority for that selection.
• Treat audit result, leaderboard row, best row, author decision, old draft, and month/date labels as different authority classes. Do not promote one class into another for cleaner prose.
• If the user's correction names a phrase as wrong or unnatural, treat that
  phrase as protected-negative text: avoid reintroducing it in headings, PDF
  titles, captions, status summaries, or final answers.

Structural Rewrite Handoff

When a route such as scientific-rewrite explicitly declares
STRUCTURAL_REWRITE_AUTHORIZED_BY_TASK, fidelity protects the content/evidence
graph rather than the source's reader-facing structure.

This handoff is valid only for explicit rewrite / structural rewrite / heavy
scientific-rewrite tasks. It does not apply to ordinary polishing, layout, OCR
cleanup, source-faithful reconstruction, or user-protected outlines.

Under this handoff, these may change unless the user explicitly protected them:

• reader-facing headings;
• paragraph grouping;
• paragraph order;
• section order;
• table organization;
• where a local explanation is introduced.

When the structural route provides a Reader Plan, fidelity ownership follows
reader-question bundles, not the original paragraph positions. A bundle may
combine non-contiguous source spans, split one dense source span into a list,
table, or formula walkthrough, or move a local explanation near the claim it
supports, provided the evidence and caveat that bind the claim move with it.

These must still be preserved:

• claims and polarity;
• evidence, attribution, and citations;
• conditions, comparators, caveats, uncertainty, and negative findings;
• formulas, numbers, variables, datasets, methods, metrics, paths, and code
  according to their literal location roles;
• decision boundaries and conclusion strength.

The acceptance criterion is complete proposition/evidence coverage with lower
reader inference burden, not source order or compression. A structural rewrite
may pass fidelity when headings or paragraph order change, but it fails if any
proposition is omitted, duplicated as new ownership, reattributed, strengthened,
weakened without authorization, or moved away from the caveat that limits it.

Classify exact items as:

• inline-critical: exact material that belongs in the reader-facing scientific
  argument, such as numbers, formulas, metrics, datasets, method names,
  comparison-defining identifiers, and citations that support nearby claims.
• relocatable-trace: exact material that must remain somewhere in the final
  deliverable but can move to a technical/evidence appendix, such as repository
  paths, checkpoint paths, exhaustive file identities, implementation locators,
  and detailed audit trails.
• internal-workflow-trace: exact material that describes the current
  automation/review workflow rather than the scientific or technical subject,
  such as Reviewed Handoff state, Gate numbers, Planner/Reviewer/Executor
  status, CI/test summaries, Git commit hashes, branch/worktree status,
  GitHub Actions run ids, task-local results/, exports/private/,
  automation/reviewed_handoff/, .local-runtime/, plugin-cache paths, or
  CURRENT.json / RESULT.md / FINAL_REPORT.md.

Relocation cannot hide or delete limitations, negative results, uncertainty,
contradicting evidence, decision conditions, attribution, or comparison
boundaries. Ordinary reader-facing headings and internal workflow labels are not
literal-protected by default. An inline-critical item is not preserved if it
appears only in a technical appendix, token inventory, receipt, or trace list;
it must remain in the reader-facing scientific context.

For a clean reader-facing scientific/technical rewrite, internal-workflow-trace
is not preserved by dumping it into prose. Use it only to understand artifact
authority and to avoid false claims. Omit it from the final candidate unless the
user explicitly requests an audit log, release handoff, or repository status
report. A final candidate fails fidelity/readability if it mixes scientific
conclusions with workflow state, CI results, commit ids, task paths, or review
status as if those were part of the scientific argument.

Red Flags

• The user asked for polishing, but content was removed.
• Chinese was converted to English or mixed-language text was normalized.
• Titles, labels, equations, notation, citations, or ordering changed.
• A visual/style change touched wording or structure.
• A generated PDF/slide/document was not rendered and inspected.
• The user repeated a correction and the workflow did not change.
• The final artifact uses month shorthand, stage shorthand, or invented
  start/final project labels instead of the best-supported version.
• Machine fields, paths, status tokens, or checklist fragments appear before
  the human-readable conclusion in a user-facing report.
• A Chinese Markdown/PDF/slide/report is technically rendered but its first
  visible section cannot be understood by the intended reader without reading
  audit logs, file paths, branch names, or English process tokens.

References

• Read references/failure-summary.md when the user has complained about prior
  writing failures, source fidelity, deletion, layout collisions, unreadable
  output, OCR/math corruption, or false completion.

Completion Standard

Use precise status:

• complete: requested artifact exists and checks pass.
• partial_complete: useful output exists, but some criteria are not met.
• qa_failed: output exists but fails fidelity, readability, rendering, or
  content checks.
• blocked: cannot proceed without user input or external state.
• blocked_target_not_met: a page/space target cannot be met without
  unapproved deletion or unreadable output.