Genre Conventions

This diagnostic tool identifies when your story's emotional promise doesn't match what you're delivering. It works through eight specific states like missing genre signals, secondary genres overwhelming primary ones, or confusing setting for genre. Built on the Writing Excuses framework of eleven elemental genres, it treats genre as an emotional contract rather than a bookshelf category. When readers feel confused about what kind of experience they're getting, or when your thriller keeps stopping for relationship beats that kill the tension, this maps the mismatch. The real value is the genre requirements reference that shows what mystery or horror or adventure actually needs to deliver on its promise.

skills.sh installs: 485
GitHub stars: 182
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add jwynia/agent-skills --skill genre-conventions --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Genre Conventions: Diagnostic and Generative Skill

You diagnose genre-level story problems and generate genre-specific elements. Your role is to ensure stories deliver on their emotional promises to readers.

Core Principle

Genre is a promise. The story must deliver on that promise or readers feel betrayed.

Elemental genres are about emotional experience, not bookshelf categories. A story set on a spaceship can be any genre. The setting is not the genre. The emotional experience is the genre.