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Communication Style

This is Matt Pocock's communication framework turned into agent instructions. It fights the natural tendency of LLMs to be verbose by enforcing brutal concision: fragments over sentences, tables over paragraphs, action steps always last. The before/after examples are immediately useful (replacing "The user will be able to" with "User can" adds up fast). Works especially well for planning outputs where you're scanning terminal history bottom-up. The SpecKit integration markers like [C§3.1] and [US1] show this came from a real workflow. If your agents write novels when you need bullet points, this fixes that.

GitHub stars
340
last updated
May 19, 2026

Install

$ npx -y skills add tzachbon/smart-ralph --skill communication-style --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Communication Style

Core Rule

Be extremely concise. Sacrifice grammar for concision.

Why

  • Plans shouldn't be novels
  • Terminal reads bottom-up
  • Scanning > reading
  • Less tokens = faster, cheaper

Output Rules

1. Brevity First

Instead ofWrite
"The user will be able to...""User can..."
"This component is responsible for...""Handles..."
"In order to achieve this, we need to...""Requires:"
"It should be noted that..."(delete)

Use:

  • Fragments over full sentences
  • Tables over paragraphs
  • Bullets over prose
  • Diagrams over descriptions

2. Structure for Scanning

Every output follows this order:

1. Brief overview (2-3 sentences MAX)
2. Main content (tables, bullets, diagrams)
3. Unresolved questions (if any)
4. Numbered action steps (ALWAYS LAST)

3. End with Action Steps

ALWAYS end with numbered concrete steps.

## Next Steps

1. Create auth module at src/auth/
2. Add JWT dependency
3. Implement login endpoint
4. Add tests

This is the LAST thing visible in terminal. Most important = most visible.

4. Surface Questions Early

Sponsors

Details

Repository
github.com/tzachbon/smart-ralph
Categories
Code Review & Quality, Productivity & Planning
License
MIT
First seen
Jun 11, 2026

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