{"id":67780,"plugin_id":"plugin_asdk_app_6aca99f4ddf481919cb0214e89117cb7","kind":"skill","collection_source":"plugin_package","comparison_source":null,"observed_at":"2026-10-28T13:11:02.204Z","digest":"1933229b1d58b95921c257d7842ca181ecce8e2db7c832d7140217c2ec80df3f","against":null,"payload":{"description":"Read the opening pages of a Tabularia Manuscript the way an agent or acquiring editor reads a submission, and say whether they would keep reading. Use when the Writer asks about their first chapter, first page, opening line, hook, whether the opening works, or is preparing pages to submit.","included_files":[],"name":"opening-pages","skill_md_contents":"---\nname: opening-pages\ndescription: Read the opening pages of a Tabularia Manuscript the way an agent or acquiring editor reads a submission, and say whether they would keep reading. Use when the Writer asks about their first chapter, first page, opening line, hook, whether the opening works, or is preparing pages to submit.\n---\n\n<what-this-is>\n\nAgents decide in the first five to ten pages, often the first few paragraphs,\nwhether to read on. This job reads only those pages, as they would, and says\nwhere attention holds and where it would slip.\n\nThis is for a novel or narrative nonfiction. A script's first pages are part\nof `screenplay-read`, and an article's opening is the heart of `article-edit`.\n\nIt is a read, not an edit. Findings become comments; nothing in the text\nchanges.\n\n</what-this-is>\n\n<read-what-they-would-read>\n\n1. `tabularia_list_drafts`, then `tabularia_project_metadata` to find where the\n   body begins. Front matter is not what an agent reads first; start at the\n   first Chapter.\n2. Read about 3,000 words from there with `tabularia_read_window` — the length\n   of the ten pages most submissions ask for — and stop. Do not read further\n   before giving the verdict: the point is to judge what the agent sees.\n3. Ask the genre if the Project does not say. A thriller and a literary novel\n   earn attention differently.\n\n</read-what-they-would-read>\n\n<what-to-look-for>\n\nThe problems agents name most often in openings:\n\n- **The story starts late.** Waking up, travel, weather, a dream, or several\n  pages of backstory before anyone wants anything. Name the Block where the\n  story begins and what comes before it.\n- **No one to follow.** By the end of the first page the reader should know\n  whose story this is and something they want or fear.\n- **No question.** Something unresolved that the reader wants answered. It\n  need not be action; it has to be there.\n- **Explanation before interest.** History, world rules or family trees the\n  reader has not yet been made to care about.\n- **Too many names at once.** More than three or four characters introduced\n  before the reader has a grip on one.\n- **Prose that gets in the way.** Run `tabularia_prose_metrics` on the opening\n  Chapter and compare it with a later one. Read the counts the way `prose-read`\n  says to; an opening noticeably flatter or more adverb-heavy than the rest of\n  the book is a finding.\n\nWhat is not a problem: a quiet opening that holds a question, an unusual\nstructure that is clearly deliberate, or a prologue that earns its place.\nPrologues are not banned; ones that delay the story are the trouble.\n\n</what-to-look-for>\n\n<what-to-report>\n\nStart with the verdict an agent would reach: where they would stop reading, if\nthey would, and why, citing the Block. Then up to three findings, each anchored\nwith `tabularia_add_comment` on the passage it is about. Say what is working too,\nin a line.\n\nIf the Writer then wants the opening rewritten, that is a Draft: offer one, and\nuse `line-edit` for sentence work.\n\n</what-to-report>\n"},"changes":[],"summary":"First saved snapshot. No earlier version is available for comparison.","summary_kind":"deterministic","summary_metadata":{}}