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Voice-First Writing

A voice-first writing system for Cowork and Claude Code. Captures how you actually sound and produces content in your authentic voice, not AI writing about your ideas.

The system works by getting you talking naturally, observing how you communicate (not what you say about how you communicate), and building a living voice guide that sharpens with every session. Drafts are built raw-first from your speech patterns, then sculpted. The result sounds like you because it started as you.

Installation

claude plugins add voice-first-writing

Quick Start

1. Install the plugin

claude plugins add voice-first-writing

2. Run setup

/setup

Setup walks you through:

  • Configuring your workspace (directory structure, preferences)
  • Capturing your voice (quick 10-minute version or deep extended interview)
  • Creating your first platform format guide
  • Orientation to the system

3. Start writing

/draft

Commands

/setup — First-Time Onboarding

Creates your workspace, captures your voice, and walks you through the system. Run this once.

/interview — Deep Voice Capture

Extended conversation (30-60 min) that produces a comprehensive voice guide. The AI gets you talking about what you care about and observes how you communicate. Not a questionnaire. A conversation designed to surface authentic voice.

/quickstart — Quick Voice Capture

Shorter version (10-15 min). Gets a working voice guide from 5-7 questions. Good enough for a first draft, refines through use.

/draft — Drafting Session

The main creative workflow. You riff on an idea, the AI pulls the strongest lines and structure, you confirm, and the AI drafts raw-first in your voice. Follows the 5-step writing process.

/derive — Article to Posts

Derives 2-3 standalone platform posts from a finished article. Each post extracts one insight and stands on its own. Not a summary, not a promo.

/review — Draft Review

Reviews a draft against your voice guide for anti-patterns, voice consistency, and energy calibration. Flags specific issues with suggested fixes.

/resume — Resume a Draft

Picks up an in-progress draft from where the last session left off. Loads working notes, reorients, and continues the process.

/publish — Publish Content

Handles both articles and posts. Articles move from ready/ to published/ with full confirmation. Posts move from posts/ to posts/published/ with a lighter flow that supports bulk publishing. Updates tracking docs for both.

/wrap — Session Wrap

Closes out a working session with documentation. Creates a session summary, checks for voice guide updates, captures new content ideas.

/formatguide — Platform Format Guide

Quick interview to generate a format guide for a specific platform (LinkedIn, Substack, etc.). The format guide works alongside the voice guide to constrain content for that platform.

Skills

Skill Description
writing-process The 5-step voice-first methodology: riff, pull, confirm, draft raw-first, read out loud. Self-updating system for voice guides and process refinement.
voice-observation How to read voice from typed text. Signals, patterns, and mental model building for text-based voice capture.

The Writing Process

  1. You talk. Riff on the idea. Not bullet points, not a thesis. Just talk about it.
  2. AI pulls. Identifies strongest lines, real argument, natural structure, energy level. Reflects it back.
  3. You confirm or correct. A conversation, not a review. Everything stays anchored to how you said it.
  4. AI drafts, constrained. Bound by your voice guide, your actual phrases, the agreed energy level. First draft is raw, not polished.
  5. You read it out loud. Any sentence that feels wrong coming out of your mouth gets cut or rewritten.

Raw-first, always. A draft that sounds like you talking at a bar is right. A draft that reads like a finished article is too polished.

Configuration

/setup creates a config.json in your project root:

{
  "voice_observation_mode": "always-on",
  "default_platform": null,
  "directories": {
    "drafts": "writings/drafts",
    "ready": "writings/ready",
    "published": "writings/published",
    "posts": "writings/posts",
    "posts_published": "writings/posts/published",
    "planning": "planning",
    "voice_guide": "writings/voice-guide.md",
    "format_guides": "writings"
  }
}
  • voice_observation_mode: "always-on" observes voice patterns during any command and flags updates. "wrap-only" saves voice observation for /wrap sessions only.
  • default_platform: Set to "linkedin", "substack", etc. to skip the platform prompt. null means always ask.
  • directories: All paths relative to project root. Customize to match your workspace structure.

File Structure

voice-first-writing/
├── .claude-plugin/plugin.json
├── CLAUDE.md
├── README.md
├── config.template.json
├── commands/
│   ├── setup.md
│   ├── interview.md
│   ├── quickstart.md
│   ├── draft.md
│   ├── derive.md
│   ├── review.md
│   ├── resume.md
│   ├── publish.md
│   ├── wrap.md
│   └── formatguide.md
└── skills/
    ├── writing-process/
    │   └── SKILL.md
    └── voice-observation/
        └── SKILL.md

How It Works

The system solves a specific problem: AI-assisted writing drifts toward the AI's voice. The back-and-forth process (AI drafts, human edits) produces content that's competent and readable but could have been written by anyone. The rough edges, specific cadence, moments of uncertainty and sudden clarity get smoothed out.

The fix isn't better prompts. It's a different process.

Instead of generating text and injecting personality, the system captures your natural voice first and constrains the AI to it. The voice guide is a living document that evolves with use. Every drafting session, every review, every session wrap is an opportunity to sharpen the model of how you communicate.

Over time, the system gets better. Not because the AI learns (it doesn't carry memory between sessions), but because the documentation gets more precise with every interaction.

The Self-Updating System

  • Voice guide: Updated when new patterns are observed, when drift is detected, when anti-patterns emerge.
  • Format guides: Refined through actual use in drafting and derivation.
  • Session summaries: Capture decisions, observations, and what's queued for next time.

The AI flags potential updates during sessions. You approve or reject. Nothing changes without your say.

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