# LinkedIn post style Human Guide ## What This Is For Helps write in a specific author's voice. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for social content: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return. Use this as a human-readable version of the LinkedIn post style agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions. ## When To Use This - Use this when you need a repeatable process for LinkedIn post style. - Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt. - Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact. ## When Not To Use This - Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer. - Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant. - Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review. ## What You Need Before Starting - The goal or business outcome you want. - The audience, customer segment, or market context. - Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance. - Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements. - A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like. ## Step-By-Step Workflow 1. State the job clearly: "Use the LinkedIn post style guide to help me with..." 2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints. 3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output. 4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below. 5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed. ## Skill-Specific Guidance - **Reporter** (Acts 1–2): States what happened. No opinion. Just data and orientation. - **Analyst** (Acts 3–4): Shifts from WHAT to WHY. Technical evaluation, measured. - **Philosopher** (Act 5): Short staccato. Cultural reference. Steps back. - **Hook** — Specific metric + compressed timeframe. No adjective, no opinion. Just the fact. - "This is what 3,982 commits in 14 days looks like." - "Anthropic just announced Opus 4.7 and published a piece about it building a C compiler from scratch." - Target 150–210 characters for the hook sentence. LinkedIn mobile truncates at this point with a "See more" fold. Everything above the fold must stand alone as a complete, compelling statement. - **Legend** — Orient the reader. Visual or contextual decoder. Bullet-pointed only when literally mapping symbols to meaning (X = Y format). Terse. - **Credibility Spike** — One dense technical sentence. Comma-separated list, no commentary. Then pull back. The reader who knows the domain sees the depth; the reader who doesn't still follows. - "Full pipeline: preprocessor, lexer, parser, semantic analysis, SSA-based IR, optimization passes, native codegen." - **Observation Layer** — Shift from WHAT to WHY. Reframe what the reader just absorbed. This is where the author's actual perspective lives — not the marketing angle, but what a working developer notices. - "The thing worth watching for is the red." ## Decision Points And Nuance The original skill emphasizes: Voice, Structure (5-Act), The "For Me" Move, Sentence Mechanics, Analogies, Cultural and Cross-Domain References, Comment Strategy, Anti-Patterns (Hard Blocks), What This Voice Is NOT, Process. Use these questions to steer the work: - What is the intended audience or buyer? - What source material must be preserved? - What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion? - What examples represent the desired quality bar? - What should the assistant avoid? ## Common Mistakes - "Quite remarkably" is the ceiling for evaluative language. The voice acknowledges genuine capability with genuine respect but never sells. Not contrarian for sport — honest by default. - Target 150–210 characters for the hook sentence. LinkedIn mobile truncates at this point with a "See more" fold. Everything above the fold must stand alone as a complete, compelling statement. - Just don't confuse the nail gun with the person holding it. - Single-sentence paragraphs are typographic percussion. They work because they're surrounded by longer passages. Don't overuse. - One line maximum. Never extended metaphors. - The author occasionally drops references from philosophy, mythology, chess, history — without explanation. The reference sits alongside plain-language description so readers who don't know it still follow. - Never explain the reference. Trust the reader. - Zero references is fine. Don't force them. ## Copy-And-Paste Prompt ```text Use the LinkedIn post style human guide. My goal: [Describe the business outcome] Audience: [Describe who this is for] Context and source material: [Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy] Constraints: [Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items] Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result. ``` ## Final Checklist - [ ] The output matches the original goal. - [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer. - [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved. - [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit. - [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person. ## Source This guide was generated from the mathews-tom/armory skill entry for `linkedin-post-style`. ## Source Skill Notes These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic. # LinkedIn Post Style Guide You are writing in a specific author's voice. This is not generic "professional LinkedIn content." Study the patterns below and internalize them before writing a single word. ## Voice Informed casual. Senior engineer at a whiteboard, not a marketing deck. Three modes, with unmarked transitions: - **Reporter** (Acts 1–2): States what happened. No opinion. Just data and orientation. - **Analyst** (Acts 3–4): Shifts from WHAT to WHY. Technical evaluation, measured. - **Philosopher** (Act 5): Short staccato. Cultural reference. Steps back. "Quite remarkably" is the ceiling for evaluative language. The voice acknowledges genuine capability with genuine respect but never sells. Not contrarian for sport — honest by default. ## Structure (5-Act) Posts follow a 5-act structure. Not rigidly, but as gravitational pull: 1. **Hook** — Specific metric + compressed timeframe. No adjective, no opinion. Just the fact. - "This is what 3,982 commits in 14 days looks like." - "Anthropic just announced Opus 4.7 and published a piece about it building a C compiler from scratch." - Target 150–210 characters for the hook sentence. LinkedIn mobile truncates at this point with a "See more" fold. Everything above the fold must stand alone as a complete, compelling statement. 2. **Legend** — Orient the reader. Visual or contextual decoder. Bullet-pointed only when literally mapping symbols to meaning (X = Y format). Terse. 3. **Credibility Spike** — One dense technical sentence. Comma-separated list, no commentary. Then pull back. The reader who knows the domain sees the depth; the reader who doesn't still follows. - "Full pipeline: preprocessor, lexer, parser, semantic analysis, SSA-based IR, optimization passes, native codegen." 4. **Observation Layer** — Shift from WHAT to WHY. Reframe what the reader just absorbed. This is where the author's actual perspective lives — not the marketing angle, but what a working developer notices. - "The thing worth watching for is the red." 5. **Meaning Layer** — Short staccato paragraphs. At most one cultural/intellectual reference with inline translation. The post peaks here philosophically, then deliberately steps down. Anti-climax by design. ## The "For Me" Move Two modes for first person, depending on post type: - **Observational posts** (analyzing something external): Withhold "I/me/my" until the final sentence. The restraint makes the first-person close land harder. "That's the interesting part for me." — introduces subjectivity, implies other valid readings, creates intimacy without forcing agreement. - **Experience posts** (evaluating something the author uses): First person deployed early when personal experience is the credibility basis. "I use Claude Code daily" establishes authority. The post earns the right to evaluate because the author is a practitioner, not a spectator. Default to the withholding pattern. Use early first person only when the post's authority rests on "I actually use this." The close can also use an implicit invitation — a statement that invites response without asking for it. "I'm curious whether that holds outside compiler projects." This is not a CTA. It surfaces genuine uncertainty. Avoid degraded forms: "What do you think?", "Agree?", "Thoughts?" remain hard-blocked. ## Sentence Mechanics **Long sentences carry information. Short sentences carry meaning.** The rhythm alternates between longer explanatory sentences that hold technical detail and short punchy fragments for emphasis: ```text Most agent demos show accumulation. Files go up, nothing comes down. This one shows iteration. ``` ```text Use them. They're real and they're good. Just don't confuse the nail gun with the person holding it. ``` Single-sentence paragraphs are typographic percussion. They work because they're surrounded by longer passages. Don't overuse. **Asyndeton** in high-impact lists — deliberate omission of "and": - "Creation, evaluation, demolition, reconstruction." (not "...and reconstruction") - "Decide what to build. Recognize when a requirement is wrong. Make architectural tradeoffs with incomplete information." Fragments at high-impact positions only. ## Analogies - Concrete, from everyday life or adjacent domains. - One line maximum. Never extended metaphors. - Earn their place by being precise, not clever. - Examples from the author's actual writing: - "A nail gun is not a carpenter."