oss-writing: Mechanizing these rules

Note

This page is the instruction text an agent loads, reproduced verbatim from skills/oss-writing/references/linting.md. You do not have to read it: install the kit and ask your agent for the skill by name.

Most of this skill is judgement and cannot be checked by a tool. Some of it is mechanical, and a repository that checks the mechanical half in CI stops spending review on it. This file maps the checkable rules onto a checker. It ships no configuration: the config belongs in the repository that adopts it, not in a skill directory an installer copies.

Read this when setting up prose linting for a repository, not while drafting.

Two tools carry everything below. Vale (errata-ai/vale) checks the prose, and commitlint (conventional-changelog/commitlint) checks the commit message. Install each from the command its own documentation publishes.

This skill also ships scripts/prose.mjs, which needs nothing installed and covers the regex rows of the table below plus the sentence-case and sentence-length rows. Reach for it while drafting, or in a repository that will not take a new tool. Prefer Vale where the repository already runs it: Vale carries a proper-noun vocabulary, per-scope rules, and an editor integration that a single script does not.

What a checker can decide

Rule	Checker
Sentence over 25 words, or over 20 in a numbered step	Vale metric with a custom formula, or an occurrence rule
Banned word or phrase present	Vale substitution rule, from the table below
Em dash, en dash, or --	regex for U+2014, U+2013, and --
Curly quote	regex for U+2018, U+2019, U+201C, U+201D
Emoji	regex for \p{Extended_Pictographic}
Inline-header bullet	regex ^\s*[-*] \*\*[^*]+:\*\*\s
Heading not in sentence case	Vale capitalization with a proper-noun exception list
Subject over 72 characters	commitlint header-max-length
Subject ends in a period	commitlint subject-full-stop
Missing blank line after the subject	commitlint body-leading-blank
Body line over 72 characters	commitlint body-max-line-length, for a message typed in an editor rather than a forge field
Conventional Commits shape, where the repository has adopted it	commitlint type-enum and subject-empty

Two figures need an explicit override rather than a default. @commitlint/config-conventional ships header-max-length at 100, so the 72-character ceiling this skill wants is a setting, not the default. A repository that prefers Git’s 50 sets it deliberately, and accepts that type(scope): spends 15 to 20 of those characters. A body wrapped at 72 is correct for a message composed in an editor. It is wrong for text typed into a forge field, which reflows on its own.

What a checker cannot decide

Do not try to lint these. A rule that fires on correct prose gets the whole linter turned off.

• Whether a claim is true. This is the failure that matters most and no tool sees it.
• Whether a body was earned. A checker can count the body’s lines; it cannot tell whether a reason, a constraint, a rejected alternative, or a consequence is in them.
• Whether a noun stack is three words or a compound term that happens to be three words.
• Whether a bolded bullet is a label or a claim.
• Whether a caveat changes what the reader should do.
• Whether the alternative in a rather than clause exists or was invented for the sentence.

Banned words and phrases

This table flattens three lists: the tell catalog in tells.md, the promotional adjectives in SKILL.md, and the timeless-language words in docs-and-readme.md. It holds only terms a substitution rule can decide on sight. A tell like features used as a verb stays out, because no rule can tell it from the noun. tells.md carries the reasoning for each.

Banned	Use
utilize, leverage, make use of	use
in order to	to
due to the fact that	because
in the event that	if
at this point in time	now
a number of	a count, or some
facilitate	help, or name the step
functionality	the feature’s name
delve	(cut)
obviate	remove the need for
predicated on	based on
holistic, comprehensive	(cut, or name the scope)
robust, powerful, elegant, rich	(cut, or state the property)
seamless, seamlessly, effortless	(cut)
blazing, blazingly fast	(cut, or give the number)
streamline	(cut, or name the step removed)
additionally, furthermore	and, or nothing
ensuring, enabling, allowing	(split into a sentence, or cut)
it is important to note, it’s worth noting that, please note	(cut)
best practices suggest, studies show	name the source, or drop the claim
very, simply, just, easily, of course	(cut)
serves as, acts as, boasts	is, has, or a precise verb
currently, presently, at present, as of this writing	(cut, outside a commit, changelog, or migration guide)