VOICE.md
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VOICE.md
The voice profile lives in a file called VOICE.md. This is not a style guide in the marketing sense — it’s a reference document that Claude Code agents read before drafting. It needs to be specific enough that an agent following it produces noticeably different output than one without it.
What goes in VOICE.md:
Voice characteristics. Not abstract adjectives (“conversational,” “authentic”) but observable patterns. For mine: I front-load the point, I use short sentences for emphasis at natural breaks, I write “Here’s the thing” before a reality check, I avoid passive constructions, I acknowledge limitations explicitly rather than hedging with qualifiers.
Banned phrases. Words and constructions that are common in AI output but not in your writing. My list includes “delve,” “navigate,” “crucial,” “leverage,” “dive in,” and “it’s worth noting.” Any sentence with those in a draft is automatically suspicious.
Positive examples. This is the part most people skip and it’s the most important. Two or three paragraphs from your actual published writing that represent your voice at its best. Rules tell the agent what to avoid; examples show it what to hit. The agent can pattern-match against published prose in a way it cannot against a list of adjectives.
Anti-examples. Paragraphs that are plausible but wrong — the kinds of sentences an AI produces that sound vaguely like you but aren’t. These help the agent identify the gap between generic AI output and your actual voice.
Reading level target. For my newsletters, this is grade 8 to 10. Not because my readers aren’t intelligent — they are — but because accessible writing at that level is faster to read and doesn’t require effort to parse. Complexity should live in the ideas, not the sentences.