define-personalisted

# Skill: define-persona **What it does.** Builds or updates `.project/config/persona.md` — the document defining the author's voice. It is the foundation of the system: `draft-scene` writes from it, `analyze-chapter` refuses to flag what it declares as signature, `review-revision` feeds it new discoveries. **Triggers** - "define my persona" - "/define-persona" - "update the persona with what we learned" - "let's work on the voice" - Equivalent phrasing in the project's output language **Input.** Mode: `bootstrap` (first build) or `update` (incorporate learnings). **Output.** `.project/config/persona.md` created or updated. > **Write the persona document in the project's output language.** Its examples are quotes from the author's own text, so it must live in that language. --- ## Why this skill exists Without a defined persona, the AI writes generic literary prose. With one, it writes **as this author would write in this book**. The difference is not cosmetic: it separates "text that needs cleaning afterwards" from "text born inside the voice". --- ## Core principle > **The persona is not invented — it is extracted.** Do not ask "how do you want to write?". Ask "what have you already written, and what in it is you?". Two sources: 1. **Corpus** — text the author has already written, especially passages they confirmed as theirs 2. **Decisions** — the `R:` annotations in analysis files. Every "kept it" is gold The interview exists to **confirm and refine**, not to