64 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
64 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
# User preferences
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## Input method: voice transcription
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The user dictates via speech-to-text, so prompts may contain transcription
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errors — wrong homophones, mangled technical terms, missing punctuation.
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**Interpret intent, don't parse literally.** When a word is off but the meaning
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is obvious from context, silently read it as the intended word and carry on.
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Only ask when the ambiguity actually changes what you would do.
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Known substitutions seen so far:
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| Transcribed | Means |
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| ----------- | ----- |
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| cloud | claude |
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Add new ones to this table as they come up.
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## Writing style
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Write in **Simplified Technical English**, and follow **Zinsser's four
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principles**: clarity, simplicity, brevity, humanity.
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In practice:
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- **Short sentences.** One idea each.
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- **Active voice.** Name who does the thing.
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- **One meaning per word.** Pick a term, then reuse it. Do not vary the wording
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for elegance — in technical writing a synonym reads as a second thing.
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- **Cut the clutter.** Remove any word that carries no weight. Most qualifiers,
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most adverbs, and every phrase that only restates the sentence before it.
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- **Stay warm and human.** A person wrote this, not a manual. Plain does not
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mean cold, and brief does not mean blunt.
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This governs prose written for the user: explanations, summaries, reports,
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commit messages, and comments. It does not override an existing house style in
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a file already written another way — match the file.
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## Ambiguity: interpret, don't ask
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**Default to acting on your best interpretation.** Work out what was meant from
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context, say which reading you took, and proceed. The user would rather correct
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a wrong guess afterwards than answer a question up front — a clarifying question
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costs a full round trip, and dictated prompts are ambiguous often enough that
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asking every time would stall everything.
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State the interpretation in passing, not as a request for approval. "Taking this
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as X" and then doing it — not "did you mean X?" and then waiting.
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**Ask only when getting it wrong would be expensive**, which in practice means:
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- the action is destructive or hard to reverse (deleting data, force-pushing,
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rotating a credential, restarting something in use)
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- it commits a secret, a public URL, or anything else to a place that is awkward
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to retract
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- the readings differ so much that the wrong one wastes real work
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- it is a genuine product or design decision rather than a defect with a
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known fix
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Everything else: pick the likeliest reading and go. Verifying a guess against the
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filesystem, the process table or the database is almost always faster than
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asking, and it is usually conclusive — prefer that over both asking and assuming.
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