Tone Shifter

Tone-shift a passage from one register to another while preserving the underlying claims, facts, structure, and information density. This is a re-voicing pass, not a content rewrite — the reader should learn the same things, but in a different "voice".

Use this skill when the input is already good content that needs to fit a different audience: a research note repurposed for an executive summary, a marketing draft made less salesy, a friend's casual message turned into a professional intro, an academic abstract rewritten for a blog.

This skill does NOT:

• add or remove substantive claims (use writer / essay-write / prose-edit to rewrite content);
• generate viral hooks (use viral-text);
• check translation parity (use translation-sync);
• audit canon (use canon-check).

ROLE

Read input + target register → output the same content rewritten in the target register → run the writer 4-layer cleanup so the result is shippable.

PIPELINE

1. Detect source register. Read the input and identify its starting register (see references/registers.md). If the user hasn't named the source, infer it from sentence length / vocab / hedge density.

1. Confirm target register. The user must name the target. If unclear, ask: "Which register? casual / friendly-professional / business-formal / academic / technical / plain-explainer."

1. Identify deltas. Look up references/transformation-rules.md for the source→target pair and gather the specific changes: contractions on/off, sentence length, vocab swaps, hedge density, jargon level, person (1st / 2nd / 3rd).

1. Apply transformations clause-by-clause. Don't paraphrase the whole text in one shot — that loses content. Walk through each sentence and apply only the deltas that fit. Preserve original sentence boundaries when possible.

1. Pass through writer. Final 4-layer clean: typography, anti-slop regex categories, structural-prose, ru-calques. This is the same final pass every other wrapper runs — see writer/SKILL.md.

1. Diff-report. Show before/after side-by-side with a 1-line note on which deltas were applied. The user reviews; they can ask for a different register or a partial revert.

MODES

• tone-shifter --to — shift to named target
• tone-shifter --to --from — explicit source (skips detection)
• tone-shifter --to --conservative — apply only safe deltas (vocab + contractions); skip restructuring
• tone-shifter --analyze — return only the detected source register + suggested targets, do not rewrite
• tone-shifter --profile — apply a custom brand-voice JSON profile (vocabulary, avoidWords, hooks, ctaPhrases) on top of register shift
• tone-shifter --infer-profile — read 2-5 sample texts and output a brand-voice JSON profile for review
• tone-shifter --verify-profile — read-only check: does the passage match the profile? Returns structured report.

REFERENCES (load on demand)

| File | When to load | |---|---| | [references/registers.md](references/registers.md) | When detecting source or naming target — defines the 6 registers and their detection markers | | [references/transformation-rules.md](references/transformation-rules.md) | After source+target known — the specific deltas to apply for each pair | | [references/brand-voice-profile.md](references/brand-voice-profile.md) | When user provides a custom brand-voice profile (JSON), or asks for one to be inferred from samples — overlays registers with concrete vocabulary / banned words / hooks / CTAs |

EXAMPLES

See [examples/before-after.md](examples/before-after.md) for 4 calibration pairs covering the most-common shifts.

CONSTRAINTS

• Do not change facts. If the input says "we raised $4M in 2023", the output cannot say "we raised several million" or "we raised in the early 2020s".
• Do not change structure unless register demands it. Casual register may merge two short academic sentences into one. Academic register may split a casual run-on. But the order of points stays.
• Do not invent transitions. The transformation is local. If the input has rough transitions, they stay rough — the user can run prose-edit for that.
• Preserve quoted speech verbatim. Quoted material does not get tone-shifted; only narration around it.
• Person changes (1st → 3rd, you → reader) only if the target register strictly requires it. Otherwise preserve original person.

INVOCATION HINTS

When the user says any of:

• "make this more casual / formal / professional / friendly / academic / accessible"
• "rewrite for a younger / older audience"
• "turn this into [email / Slack / LinkedIn / blog / academic] tone"
• "less salesy", "less corporate", "less jargon", "less formal"
• "give me a plain-English version"

Use this skill. If the user wants a viral version (hook + CTA), use viral-text. If they want fiction voice, use prose-edit.

Source & license

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

• Author: Mikefluff
• Source: Mikefluff/skills
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@mikefluff/skills

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