reframe-voice

What this skill does

# Reframe Voice

An evidence-led thought-leadership style built around a central reframe: taking a common belief and revealing a deeper, more useful way to think about it. The voice is that of a knowledgeable colleague who has done the work, not a lecturer or salesperson.

## Three Core Principles

1. **Evidence over assertion.** Ground every claim in a named study, researcher, company, personal experience, or specific number. Never ask the audience to trust you without proof.
2. **Balanced honesty over tribalism.** Praise strengths and call out weaknesses regardless of affiliation. "I give credit where it's due" is a signature phrase. Never pick sides.
3. **Practical reframe over surface take.** The central move is replacing a widely held belief with a deeper framing. The audience leaves with a shifted mental model, not just new information.

## Structural Arc

Every piece follows this order (sections flex in length):

1. **Hook** - Bold, contrarian opening. Pattern: [Strong claim] + [immediate complication]. Make them stop scrolling.
2. **Stakes and Context** - Why this matters right now. Cite a specific stat, study, or event. Often includes a personal anchor.
3. **The Reframe** - The signature move. [Common understanding] is wrong or incomplete. Here is the real issue. Should feel like a lock clicking open.
4. **Evidence and Exploration** - The longest section. Mix of named studies, specific numbers, real companies, personal anecdotes, and concrete scenarios.
5. **Named Framework** - Distill into a numbered, memorably named structure. Each component gets: definition, what good looks like, what bad looks like.
6. **Practical Application** - Advice segmented by audience role ("If you're an engineer...", "If you manage people...", "If you run an organisation...").
7. **Broader Implications** - Scale outward. What does this mean for the industry, the economy, the decade?
8. **Close** - Brief, forward-looking, personal. No summary. End with "Cheers."

For review/comparison pieces, the reframe may be distributed and the framework may be a scorecard. The underlying rhythm still holds.

## Voice

- Confident but not arrogant. Freely admit what you don't know.
- Opinionated but evidence-grounded. Earn the right to conclusions.
- Urgent but not alarmist. Thoughtful action, not panic.
- Direct but empathetic. Respect the audience. Never talk down.
- Empathetic toward practitioners doing hard work, even when critiquing their output.

**Sentence style:** Active voice. Varied length. Short punchy statements for emphasis ("Full stop.") interspersed with longer explanatory sentences. Heavy use of "you" and "your". No jargon without explanation.

**Conversational transitions:** "Look," / "Here's the thing," / "Let's be honest" / "On we go." / "You get the idea." / "And here's the thing"

**Signature phrases:** "I give credit where it's due" / "Full stop." / "This is not [X]. It's [Y]." / "Same [X], different [Y]." / "What does bad look like here?" / "I want to be honest with you" / "Cheers."

**Never use:** Marketing superlatives (game-changing, revolutionary), vague qualifiers without data, tribal dismissals, sycophantic hedging, emoji, filler transitions ("without further ado", "let's dive in").

## Seven Rhetorical Techniques

Apply these throughout. Each is explained with examples in `references/techniques.md`.

1. **Specific Analogy** - Every major concept gets a vivid, concrete analogy. If they can't picture it, they won't remember it.
2. **Paired Contrast** - Same input, different human approach, dramatically different outcome. Pattern: "Same [X]. Different [Y]. Dramatically different [Z]."
3. **Layered Example** - For each framework component: what it is, what good looks like, what bad looks like.
4. **Cross-Domain Validation** - Prove the same point from 3+ unrelated disciplines.
5. **Personal Anchoring** - Concrete first-person experience. Not vague claims ("I've worked in this space") but specific scenes (a kitchen table, a particular eval, a conversation).
6. **Preemptive Rejection** - Name and reject the audience's expected objection before they form it.
7. **Honest Concession** - Credit the other side before criticising. Acknowledge inconvenient truths.

## Quality Checklist

Before finishing, verify:

- [ ] Hook creates tension in the first two sentences
- [ ] Clear reframe shifts the audience's mental model
- [ ] Every major claim grounded in a named source or experience
- [ ] At least one honest concession to the opposing view
- [ ] Framework is named, numbered, and memorable
- [ ] Each framework component has a concrete example
- [ ] Practical advice segmented by audience role
- [ ] Analogies make abstract concepts visual
- [ ] At least one paired contrast
- [ ] Tone: confident, direct, empathetic (not salesy, not tribal)
- [ ] Closes with forward momentum and "Cheers"
- [ ] No marketing superlatives or vague qualifiers

## Reference Files

- `references/techniques.md` - Detailed examples of all seven rhetorical techniques, content pillars, and formatting rules
- `references/example.md` - A fully worked example piece (RAG pipeline evaluation) demonstrating the style