pharaoh-write

A Claude Code toolkit for writing content that doesn't read like AI wrote it.

Ships one slash command, one subagent, and seven skills. Drop it into any Claude Code session and it routes your draft through structural frameworks, voice rules, and an anti-AI filter before returning the output. No API keys, no SaaS, no account. The whole thing runs against the agent you already have.

It covers the writing surfaces that most often leak AI defaults: long-form posts, landing pages, social replies, cold outreach, narrative work, and startup positioning copy. It does not cover product writing (UI strings, error messages, in-app microcopy) - that lives closer to the code and belongs in a different toolkit.

What's included

• /write - the single entry point. Pass a brief, get a draft plus craft notes.
• writer-agent - a subagent that loads the relevant skills, drafts in isolation, and runs its own self-review before returning.
• Seven skills:
  • content-frameworks - router. Picks the right structural skills for the format.
  • longform-writing - blog posts, essays, anything past ~600 words.
  • startup-narrative - positioning, landing copy, pitch language.
  • story-structure - narrative pieces, founder updates, anything that needs a payoff.
  • short-reply - Reddit, X, HN, LinkedIn, Discord.
  • natural-voice - voice rules and corpus-driven conditioning. Edit this to match how you write.
  • anti-ai-filter - final pass. Strips banned vocabulary, em dashes, formulaic structure, and AI-default cadence.

How it works

Four filtering stages between your brief and the final draft:

1. Brief sanitization - the /write command scrubs orchestrator anti-patterns (casing dictates, voice-anchor-as-phrasebank, "make it punchy") before the agent ever sees the brief
2. Drafting - the writer-agent loads relevant skills, reads your voice corpus, drafts in isolation
3. Self-eval - the agent runs a 10-question rubric and a deconstructor pass on its own output
4. Mechanical enforcement - a Node.js check script (skills/anti-ai-filter/check.mjs) greps the draft against a phrase blacklist, counts capital sentence-starts vs format-aware targets, checks em-dash budget, scans for verbatim phrases copied from voice anchors, verifies rhythm. Exit code 0 = pass, 1 = fail. Loops until clean.

The script is the load-bearing piece — it runs as a Bash tool so the agent can't claim to have run a final pass without invoking it. Zero dependencies (Node.js standard library only); anyone running Claude Code already has Node.

MIT licensed. Self-hosted. Yours to fork.

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Install

git clone https://github.com/Pharaoh-so/pharaoh-write.git
cd pharaoh-write
./install.sh

Default behavior: copies the command, agent, and skill files into ~/.claude/{commands,agents,skills}/. Skips any file that already exists - never overwrites.

Install modes

Flag	When to use
(none)	First-time install. Skips files that already exist.
--sync-rules	Pull rule updates without losing personalization. Updates everything except protected files (voice corpus, BRIEF_TEMPLATE, phrase-blacklist-local).
--fresh	One-command total reinstall. Backs up existing install to ~/.claude.bak.<timestamp>/, wipes everything pharaoh-write owns (preserving protected files), then installs latest.
--link	Dev mode. Like --fresh but creates symlinks from ~/.claude/ to this repo instead of copying. Edits to repo files reflect in your install immediately. Use this if you're iterating on the agent rules.
--dry-run	Show what would change. No files modified. Combine with any other flag.

For most users:

• First install: ./install.sh
• Pulling updates: git pull && ./install.sh --sync-rules
• Big version bumps or migrations: git pull && ./install.sh --fresh
• Iterating on the rules yourself: ./install.sh --link (clone stays as your edit surface)

Protected files

Always preserved by --sync-rules and --fresh:

• ~/.claude/skills/writer-agent/voice-corpus/ and everything inside it
• ~/.claude/skills/writer-agent/BRIEF_TEMPLATE.md
• ~/.claude/skills/anti-ai-filter/phrase-blacklist-local.md (your local additions to the phrase blacklist; ships empty, you populate it)

Verify

After install, open a Claude Code session and type /write - the slash command should autocomplete and show its description. If it doesn't, check ~/.claude/commands/write.md exists.

To verify the deterministic check script works:

node ~/.claude/skills/anti-ai-filter/check.mjs --help

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Quick start

Once installed, drop a brief into Claude Code:

/write reply to https://reddit.com/r/programming/comments/.../ - goal: build credibility by sharing what didn't work, audience: skeptical r/programming devs, format: reddit-reply

Or point it at a brief doc:

/write docs/campaigns/launch-post.md

The writer-agent will load the relevant skills, read any examples in your voice-corpus/, draft the content, run its 10-question self-review rubric, run an anti-AI deconstructor pass, and return:

• The final draft
• Craft notes (which frameworks applied, what got rewritten, what assumptions were made)

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Customize

The toolkit ships with sensible defaults, but the agent's voice output is only as good as the corpus you seed and the voice rules you keep.

1. Seed the voice corpus

~/.claude/skills/writer-agent/voice-corpus/ has subdirectories for each format (reddit-replies, blog-posts, cold-dms, etc). Drop your own real writing examples in. Five real examples per format beats fifty synthetic ones.

The shipped seed files are clearly marked SEED-EXAMPLE.md - replace them, don't add to them.

2. Edit the natural-voice skill

~/.claude/skills/natural-voice/SKILL.md ships with placeholder vocabulary tables. Replace them with your own most-used sentence starters, hedges, acknowledgments, and signature words. Pull these from your real writing - Slack messages, sent emails, posts you've published.

The skill's structural rules (rhythm, punctuation defaults, banned words) are universal and don't need editing. The vocabulary section is the part that needs to become yours.

3. Tune the agent if needed

~/.claude/agents/writer-agent.md is the orchestrator. It references the skills above and applies them in order. Most users won't need to edit it, but you can:

• Add a new format (e.g., tweet-thread) by extending the format table
• Adjust the rubric questions for what you most often catch in your own drafts
• Change the deconstructor's bias if your default failure mode isn't "too clean"

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What this is not

• Not a SaaS. No API keys, no account, no usage limits. Everything runs in your local Claude Code session.
• Not a model wrapper. It uses whatever model your Claude Code session uses.
• Not voice impersonation. It doesn't try to sound exactly like you. It tries to sound less like AI and more like a competent human writing in YOUR register, given the corpus and rules you've configured.
• Not for product writing. UI strings, error messages, in-app microcopy, button labels - those need product context the agent doesn't have. Keep those workflows separate.

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Uninstall

# Back up your voice corpus first if you want to keep it
cp -R ~/.claude/skills/writer-agent/voice-corpus ~/voice-corpus-backup

# Remove pharaoh-write managed files
rm ~/.claude/commands/write.md
rm ~/.claude/agents/writer-agent.md
rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/{content-frameworks,longform-writing,startup-narrative,story-structure,natural-voice,short-reply,anti-ai-filter,writer-agent}

If you used --link mode, the same rm commands work — they remove the symlinks (not the files in your clone). The clone stays intact at whatever path you ran --link from.

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License

MIT. Fork it, ship it, keep it private - whatever works.

See LICENSE.