skills/slop-pattern-repair/SKILL.md

---
name: slop-pattern-repair
description: Repair specific recurring phrase, structure, rhythm, agency, metadiscourse, and formatting patterns after a draft has been read in context. Use when the user wants targeted anti-slop cleanup rather than a general rewrite.
---

# Slop Pattern Repair

Repair named patterns, not the writer's personality.

## Procedure

1. Read the whole draft first.
2. Identify only the regions with a clear pattern problem.
3. Use `references/repair-playbook.md` to choose the smallest repair.
4. Preserve factual locks and voice anchors from the surrounding prose.
5. Re-read the paragraph after each repair. A local fix can damage cadence or meaning even when the sentence looks cleaner alone.
6. Do not normalize untouched sentences merely to match the edited ones.

## Rule weighting

### Usually repair

- throat-clearing before the point
- formulaic binary reframes
- repeated negative reveals
- faux-insight framing
- unsupported authority
- importance labels without consequences
- repeated metacommentary
- synonym cycling
- fake-profound endings
- formatting that exists only for emphasis

### Repair only in context

- adverbs
- passive voice
- inanimate agency
- rhetorical questions
- Wh-word openings
- fragments
- list length
- em dashes
- paragraph length
- short-line stacking or micro-paragraphing
- contractions or informality

A contextual pattern deserves a repair when it clusters, hides meaning, repeats a template, or obviously conflicts with the genre. One instance is often just writing.

## Repair style

Prefer deletion before replacement when the sentence still works without the slop. When replacement is necessary, use the draft's own vocabulary and syntax as the source of style.

## Spoken-language veto

When `plain-spoken-writing` is in the route, do not remove a dialect marker, filler, rhetorical question, direct address, correction, code-switched term, long spoken sentence, or repetition merely because a generic anti-slop rule can match it. Repair only when the feature is redundant, templated, unclear, or demonstrably weakens this specific piece. If a repair makes the text less sayable or more like article prose, return that region to `plain-spoken-writing`.