# Long-Form Quality Rules

Canonical quality rules for long-form LinkedIn content (newsletter editions,
essays, series articles). These are enforced by the `/linkedin:newsletter`
pipeline — primarily in **Step 4 (Consistency + quality)**, reinforced by the
fact-check sweep (Step 5) and the persona sweeps (Steps 6 + 9).

> **Provenance.** Distilled from the Seres series production (the operator's
> first full long-form run) and codified as the authoritative spec in plan §8.
> Source of truth: this file. `commands/newsletter.md` Step 4 points here rather
> than restating the rules — there is exactly one place to change them.

> **Scope.** These rules are for **long-form only**. Short-form feed posts are
> governed by the `PreToolUse` content-gatekeeper / voice-guardian hooks, which
> are calibrated for feed posts and stay short-form-only (plan decision B). Long-
> form quality is enforced by pipeline *phases*, not by those hooks.

---

## The rules

### 1. Leder-takeaway (lead takeaway)

Every text lands **ONE clear takeaway + ONE concrete action**. The reader should
be able to state, in a single sentence, what they now think differently and what
they will do about it.

- Cut references hard. Hands-on credibility beats a citation-pile — a text that
  shows you have done the work outweighs one that quotes everyone who has written
  about it.
- If the reader cannot state the takeaway in one sentence, the text is not done —
  tighten until they can.
- **Serve what the reader can DO, not what the author knows.** The text exists to
  give the *primær* reader (whoever sits at the reader-facing end of the edition's
  configured **target-level span** — see `config/personas.template.md`) something
  they can act on from their own chair — not to demonstrate the author's breadth.
  Completeness
  is not a virtue: if a passage exists to be thorough rather than to move the
  reader's decision forward, cut it. Choose ONE concrete, verifiable (preferably
  Norwegian) case over an exhaustive list.

**Pass/flag:** PASS when the one-takeaway + one-action is stated and unmistakable;
FLAG when the text carries two competing takeaways or ends without a concrete
action.

### 2. Premiss→konklusjon-bue (premise→conclusion arc)

Establish **one clear premise early** (in the ingress + first paragraph), then let
the conclusion **grip that premise concretely and twist it forward** — give a
direction plus one tangible grip. The conclusion does not merely summarize.

- The premise the conclusion grips must be the SAME premise the ingress set. If
  the draft drifted to a different premise mid-text, realign the conclusion or the
  ingress — never leave two premises standing.

**Pass/flag:** PASS when ingress-premise == conclusion-premise and the close moves
it forward; FLAG when the conclusion only restates, or grips a premise the opening
never set.

### 3. AI-slop-fraser (forbidden phrases — strip on sight)

These phrases read as machine-written and are **banned**. They are the Seres
ban-list; strip them on sight (the list is Norwegian because the target text is
Norwegian):

- «her må jeg være ærlig» / «for å være ærlig»
- «ikke bare X, men Y» (the not-just-X-but-Y construction as a tic)
- gratuitous three-item listing (rule-of-three used as a reflex, not because the
  content actually enumerates three things)
- «i en stadig mer kompleks verden» (and equivalent throat-clearing openers)
- tacked-on summary sentences that restate what was just said
- **modell-/navne-katalog** — reeling off product names, model names, or
  benchmarks (Qwen3-14B, Ministral 3, SWE-bench, Arena, «parametere», «vekter»)
  for completeness' sake. A list of names is a jargon wall to the primær reader;
  pick ONE concrete, verifiable case instead (see rule 1). This is a **hard fail
  for the primær persona**, not a stylistic nit — it is the failure mode that
  nearly shipped in the Seres process.
- **selvrefererende overhead-åpning** — meta-commentary about what the text will
  or will not do, warm-ups, and openers like «Det er bra. Det er ikke det denne
  teksten handler om». Start on the reader's problem, not on the text's own
  framing.

**Pass/flag:** PASS when none appear; FLAG (with count) and remove each
occurrence. A modell-/navne-katalog or a sjargong-mur is a hard fail (treat as
BLOCK-level for the primær reader in the persona sweep), not a soft flag.

### 4. Generell, ikke etat-/person-spesifikk (general, not org-/person-specific)

Write for a broad reader, not as an internal memo or a grievance.

- No personal agency anecdotes.
- Present **opportunities, not provocations**.
- At most **one** structural anchoring reference per text — never repeated
  criticism of a named person or organization.

**Pass/flag:** PASS when the text reads as generally useful and carries ≤1
structural anchor; FLAG personal anecdotes, provocations, and any repeated naming.

### 5. Formaterings-dose (minimal formatting dose)

> *"No article should look like a PowerPoint printout."*

- **Bold** = at most one point per section.
- Short lists (2–4 items) **only** where the text already enumerates — never turn
  load-bearing reasoning into bullets. Prose carries the argument; lists carry
  genuine enumerations.
- Tables sparingly.

**Pass/flag:** PASS when formatting stays within these bounds; FLAG (and trim) when
bold is scattered, reasoning has been bulletized, or tables proliferate.

### 6. Gap lukkes med stramming, ikke utvidelse (close gaps by tightening, not expanding)

The gap between a draft and the final is closed by **swapping weaker passages for
sharper ones and cutting** — not by adding material. **Hold the length flat.**

This rule holds across every later phase too: fact-check fixes (Step 5), persona
rework (Step 6), and hook revisions (Step 9) all close their gaps by tightening,
never by expansion.

**Pass/flag:** target a **flat** length delta vs. the prior draft; FLAG when a
revision grew the word count to cover a weakness instead of sharpening it.

### 7. Kalibrering per sweep (per-sweep calibration — a user choice, not a default)

Before each quality / fact-check / persona sweep, **the operator calibrates** —
this is a per-sweep user choice, never a silent default:

- **Fold-in aggressiveness** — conservative vs. aggressive when folding flags back
  into the text.
- **Jargon handling** — keep, gloss, or cut domain jargon.
- **Persona weighting on conflict** — how to weigh a secondary persona's flag
  against the primær when they disagree (the primær trumfer rule still governs the
  final gate, but the calibration sets how hard a secondary signal is chased).

Ask once if the Step 1 brief did not already settle it. Do not assume an
aggressiveness; the same draft can be tightened conservatively or aggressively and
the operator owns that dial.

### 8. Skjelett før prosa (skeleton before prose — pre-condition for every other rule)

The argument-line — premiss, problem, anbefaling, gevinst, vei videre — must
be **explicit, visible, and confirmed** before the first sentence of prose is
written. None of the other rules can bite reliably on a draft whose spine was
never declared: Rule 1 (leder-takeaway) and Rule 2 (premiss→konklusjon-bue) in
particular collapse into post-hoc reconstruction if the spine was never gated.

- Write the five-line skeleton (premiss / problem / anbefaling / gevinst / vei
  videre) and the section pitches **before any prose**. Both the operator and
  the persona-skjelett-sweep (`persona-reviewer` mode: skjelett) must say JA on
  this skeleton before Step 3a (spine prose) starts.
- A spine error caught at the skeleton stage costs 5–15 min; the same error
  caught at Step 6 (resonance) costs 4–12 h; caught post-lock it costs a day
  of cascading rework. The cheapest gate is also the earliest.
- The skeleton format is **identical to the Maskinrommet writing-contract §A**
  (premiss / problem / anbefaling / gevinst / vei videre). Pipeline editions
  produced through `/linkedin:newsletter` therefore satisfy that contract at
  the structural level by construction.

**Pass/flag:** PASS when the skeleton + pitches exist as `<serie>/NN-skjelett.md`
and both the operator-gate AND the persona-skjelett-sweep returned JA before
prose started; FLAG retroactively if a draft turns out to have skipped this gate
(treat as a process miss and harvest the lesson — do not retrofit a skeleton
to a finished draft and call it gated).

---

## How the pipeline uses these rules

| Phase | Where the rules bite |
|-------|----------------------|
| Step 2.5 — Skeleton + section pitch | Primary enforcement of rule 8: skeleton + pitches MUST exist and be JA from operator + persona-skjelett-sweep before prose. |
| Step 3a — Spine prose | Rule 6 applies even within spine prose (tighten, don't expand the spine); rule 8 is the gate that lets 3a start. |
| Step 4 — Consistency + quality | Primary enforcement: apply rules 1–6, calibrate per rule 7, report a pass/flag per rule. Rule 8 is verified as historical fact (skeleton existed + was gated). |
| Step 5 — Fact-check sweep | Fixes obey rule 6 (tighten, don't expand). |
| Step 6 — Persona sweep (pre-lock) | Rework obeys rule 6; the leader-takeaway (rule 1) and arc (rule 2) are what the reader jury judges for resonance. A draft that passed rule 8 typically lands here with far fewer spine-level reworks. |
| Step 9 — Hook / conversion gate | Hook revisions obey rule 6 (sharpen the krok by tightening, body stays locked). |

## Self-certification boundary

Whether a text *lands*, matches voice, is original, or reaches prose quality is
**subjective judgment** and is NEVER self-certified green by Claude (plan §10.0).
These rules give objective-where-possible checks (forbidden-phrase presence,
length delta, formatting counts, one-takeaway test), but the resonance verdict is
routed to the persona sweep (`[GATE]`) or the operator (`[OPERATØR]`), never
auto-passed.

## Related

- `commands/newsletter.md` — Step 4 applies these rules; the whole pipeline
  references them.
- `agents/fact-checker.md` — Step 5 sweep (guilty-until-disproven).
- `agents/persona-reviewer.md` — Step 6 (resonance) + Step 9 (conversion) reader
  jury.
- `config/personas.template.md` — the reader personas + "primær trumfer" rule.
- `references/newsletter-strategy-guide.md` — strategic context for long-form.
