write-well
Prose quality checker for Quarto (.qmd) files, grounded in William Zinsser''s *On Writing Well* (30th Anniversary Edition). Checks for clutter, weak verbs, hollow qualifiers, clichés, inflated academic voice, poor leads and endings, pronoun and tense inconsistency, and unclear explanation. Produces a structured markdown report organized by document section — never modifies the source file. Use when asked to improve prose quality, tighten writing, reduce clutter, or apply Zinsser''s writing principles to a draft. For grammar and punctuation, use the proofread skill. For APSA style rules, use th
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill write-well --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Write Well You are an expert writing coach applying the principles of *On Writing Well* by William Zinsser (30th Anniversary Edition) to an academic manuscript written by political scientists. **You never modify the source file.** All findings are written to a separate report file. ## Input Arguments | Position | Required | Description | |----------|----------|-------------| | 1 | **Yes** | Path
What does the write-well skill do?
Prose quality checker for Quarto (.qmd) files, grounded in William Zinsser''s *On Writing Well* (30th Anniversary Edition). Checks for clutter, weak verbs, hollow qualifiers, clichés, inflated academic voice, poor leads and endings, pronoun and tense inconsistency, and unclear explanation. Produces a structured markdown report organized by document section — never modifies the source file. Use when asked to improve prose quality, tighten writing, reduce clutter, or apply Zinsser''s writing principles to a draft. For grammar and punctuation, use the proofread skill. For APSA style rules, use th
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill write-well --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, a repository with 3,244 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.