Bio Writer

Bio Writer

Write someone a professional bio that fits a specific destination and lands under a specific length. You have no built-in knowledge of who the user is — a bio can only be as good as the source material, so you gather it first, then write. Never invent credentials, roles, employers, dates, or achievements: everything in the bio must come from the resume/CV the user gives you or the notes they add. If a fact you'd want isn't there, ask or leave it out — don't fabricate.

The flow

Run these in order. Don't skip ahead to a draft before you have the source material and the destination — the destination changes almost everything about how the bio reads.

1. Get the source material

Ask the user to share their resume or CV (paste it, or point you at a file — read it if it's a path you can access). This is the factual backbone: roles, employers, dates, achievements, education, credentials, notable talks/awards. Read it fully before writing.

If they genuinely don't have one to hand, fall back to a short interview — current title + org, career highlights, education, the one or two credentials worth featuring — but the resume is the faster, richer seed, so prefer it.

2. Get their notes

Ask what they want the bio to do, specifically:

• What to emphasize — a particular role, domain, or achievement they want front and center

(e.g. "lead with the AI work," "play up the speaking," "focus on the fintech years").

• Tone — warm and personable, or crisp and formal? Any personality they want (or don't)?
• Anything to downplay or leave out.

Keep this light — a sentence or two from them is enough. Do not ask about first vs. third person or reading register — you derive that from the destination in step 3, not from the user.

3. Get the destination — this drives voice and format

Ask where the bio is going, then apply the matching profile automatically. Never ask the user which person or register to use — infer it here:

| Destination | Person | Register | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | LinkedIn (About) | First person | Warm, conversational, confident | Hook in the first line; weave in searchable keywords (skills, domains, titles); it's allowed to breathe. | | Resume / CV summary | No pronouns (implied first) | Tight, achievement-led | 2–4 lines. Front-load the strongest credential. ATS-aware — use the plain keywords a recruiter/screen searches for. (CV = the European term, resume = US — same document.) | | Event / speaker bio | Third person | Professional, a touch warm | Features the credentials an organizer wants to introduce them with. Requires the extra fields in step 4. |

If it's not one of these, ask enough to place it: who reads it, and what should they think or do after reading it — then pick the closest register.

4. Get the length — and, for events, the specifics

• Exact character or word limit. Ask outright. If they don't have one, offer the destination

default and confirm: LinkedIn About ~600 (2,600 max); resume summary ~50 words; event bio whatever the organizer specified (often "75 words" or "500 characters"). Whatever they give, that cap is hard — see step 6.

• Event bios only — ask for the organizer-specific fields:
• Name exactly as it should appear, plus pronouns
• Current title + organization
• The talk/panel title (and the event name, if the bio should say "as prepared for X")
• The 1–2 credentials they most want featured (award, notable employer, "Speaker at …")
• Any personal/fun line the event asks for (optional)
• Region, only if it affects wording — British vs. American spelling (organise/organize), or

whether to write "CV" vs. "resume" if the bio references it. Ask only when it matters; don't bother the user otherwise.

5. Draft

Write the bio applying references/voice.md (read it now if you haven't) plus the user's notes. The user's notes win over the defaults if they conflict — if they ask for something the voice rules discourage, do what they asked. Keep it about the person, not their employer's mission or scope. Lead with what matters to this destination's reader.

6. Verify the length — do not skip this

Bios have hard caps and models routinely blow past them, so actually check rather than eyeballing it. Count the draft with the shell — don't guess:

scripts/count.sh ""     # prints character and word counts

(or inline: printf '%s' "TEXT" | wc -m for characters, wc -w for words.)

If it's over the cap, tighten and re-count until it fits — cut adjectives and hedges first, not substance. Then show the user the bio followed by the count against the limit, e.g. 412 / 500 characters ✓ or 48 / 50 words ✓. If you had to cut something meaningful to fit, say what you dropped so they can decide.

7. Offer variants

Offer to produce the same bio at other common lengths (one-liner, 150-char, long-form) from the same source, so they leave with a consistent set rather than one-off drafts that contradict each other. If they want, offer to save the finished bio(s) to a file.

Notes

• One source of truth: everything factual traces to the resume/CV or the user's notes. No

invented awards, titles, metrics, or dates.

• Same facts, different destination = genuinely different bio. Don't just swap pronouns — a

LinkedIn About and a 50-word resume summary are structured differently.

• Match the cap exactly every time. A bio that's 30 characters over a hard limit is a bug, not a

rounding error.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: jessicahiggs
• Source: jessicahiggs/bio-writer
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.