reviewing-technical-prose skill (riekelt) for Claude Code: review documents with severity-tagged findings

Makes Claude review someone else's technical text and report severity-tagged findings, or rewrite it without adding or losing a fact.

Installs: 20.7K; on skills.sh
Stars: 36; on GitHub
Updated: Sep 2026; last repo commit

reviewing-technical-prose gives Claude a review routine for technical documents. Findings are tagged BLOCKER, WARNING or OBS, the verdict comes first, and an empty review says FINDINGS: none. For rewrites, the content must stay identical: an added fact counts as an error just like a lost one. It lists what not to flag, and ends with a delivery checklist. It lists the technical-writing skill as required background.

Good for

Reviewers who want a findings report with a verdict on the first line
Editors who rewrite another author's text and must keep the content identical
Authors who want a final pass before a document ships

Install reviewing-technical-prose

Claude Code

Copy this prompt.

Install the reviewing-technical-prose skill in Claude Code. Run this command:

/plugin marketplace add riekelt/technical-writer
/plugin install technical-writer@technical-writer

Then check that it loaded and tell me how to use it.

2
Paste it into Claude Code. It shows the change and asks before running it.

Pick one route, not both, or you get every skill twice. The skills CLI route must include technical-writing, which reviewing-technical-prose lists as REQUIRED BACKGROUND in its SKILL.md.

From the project README. Source.

What's in the skill

When it loads

Use when reviewing, rewriting, or editing someone else's technical text, when writing a review report on a document, or as the final check before delivering any document. Encodes the severity mapping, the findings format, the what-not-to-flag list, and the delivery checklist. Use before any document ships, even when it looks fine.

Sections in SKILL.md

Overview
When to invoke, and not
Severity mapping
Rewriting someone else's text
Findings to leave alone
Review reports
Delivery checklist

Key facts

Author: riekelt (owner of the GitHub repo)
License: MIT (LICENSE file and plugin manifest)
Installs on skills.sh: 20,655 as of 2026-11-02
GitHub stars: 36 for the whole riekelt/technical-writer repo, 2026-11-02
What is inside: 1 file: SKILL.md
Needs: The technical-writing skill (SKILL.md lists it as REQUIRED BACKGROUND)
Part of: The technical-writer plugin: 11 skills, 2 agents and 2 commands
Last repo commit: 2026-09-13
Works in: Claude Code per the README install section. The repo also ships Codex and Cursor plugin manifests.

What it includes

BLOCKER, WARNING and OBS, each with a definition
BLOCKER covers hard-rule violations and claims that trace to nothing. WARNING covers banned constructions and structural defects such as buried conclusions. OBS covers ambiguity and missing polish.
Read · Severity mapping
Four steps, three control questions, content stays identical
Claude marks banned constructions, writes a version, reads it aloud and asks three control questions, including whether the rewrite added or dropped a fact, number, date, name or source. A rewrite of text with no real claim becomes deletion plus a marked gap.
Try: “Rewrite docs/overview.md to remove banned constructions without changing any fact.”
Write · Rewriting someone else's text
A list of patterns that are not defects by themselves
Polished grammar, one repeated opening, one short emphatic sentence, formal words, factual contrasts, bounded qualifiers and deliberate awkwardness are not flagged unless several signs appear in the same paragraph.
Read · Findings to leave alone
Verdict first, most severe first, a named empty case
Each finding has one sentence on the defect, a location, a proposed fix and a confidence level. Re-reviews list only what remains, and the report acknowledges what is good.
Try: “Review docs/runbook.md and give me a report with a verdict.”
Read · Review reports
A pre-ship checklist for any document
Covers matching neighbouring documents, the dash and history rules, banned constructions, conclusion first, one action per procedure step, costs next to benefits, numbers traced to sources, followed references, consistent terms, read aloud, and the remove-the-name test.
Read · Delivery checklist

From the official docs

Permissions

Low risk

A review can lead to Claude rewriting documents in your repo, and the plugin route adds an agent with shell access.

What it can do

Read your data
Create and change things
Delete things
Read-only mode

Watch out for

The review command runs shell commands
/prose-review runs shasum -a 256 on each file, and with no file named it runs git diff --name-only and git ls-files. The prose-reviewer agent has Read, Glob, Grep and Bash tools and is told never to modify a file. github.com
The plugin route adds 2 agents and 2 commands
The plugin ships agents prose-reviewer and doc-grounder (both with Read, Glob, Grep and Bash tools) and the commands /prose-review and /ground-docs. The plugin folder has no hooks or MCP config. Use the skills command in the install box if you want only this skill. github.com

Technical details

Turning on read-only	No read-only mode. The skill tells Claude to write or edit documents.
Sign-in and keys	SKILL.md names no account or API key.
Data retention	SKILL.md names no logging or telemetry.
Scopes	Claude reads the documents under review and can rewrite them The /prose-review command (plugin route) computes SHA-256 digests and, with no file named, lists changed Markdown files with git

Questions

What does reviewing-technical-prose do?

It makes Claude review or rewrite technical text against the technical-writer house rules and report findings by severity. A rewrite must keep every fact, number, date, name and source.

How do I install reviewing-technical-prose?

Use the install box at the top of this page. The plugin route installs the whole set. The skills command route names technical-writing as well, because this skill lists it as required background.

Does it edit my document?

For a review, the skill describes findings and proposed fixes. For a rewrite request, Claude writes the new text; SKILL.md says to show the rewrite before overwriting when the author is reachable.

What is the prose-review command?

The plugin ships /prose-review. For each file it computes a SHA-256 with shasum, dispatches a prose-reviewer agent, and relays the verdict with the digest it binds to. The command applies no fixes, and edits void the verdict.

reviewing-technical-prose vs technical-writing?

technical-writing sets the rules for writing a document. reviewing-technical-prose checks a finished or foreign document against those rules and reports findings. It lists technical-writing as required background, and technical-writing points to it for the final check.

Is reviewing-technical-prose safe to install?

The skill folder holds only SKILL.md, so it bundles no scripts. The plugin's /prose-review command runs shasum and, with no file named, git commands to list changed Markdown files. Review the changes it makes to your documents, as you would any edit.

Can I use reviewing-technical-prose in the Claude app or Cursor?

The README documents Claude Code, and the repo also ships Codex and Cursor plugin manifests. It does not mention the Claude app. Our advice: this page offers no Claude app upload because the skill works on documents inside a repository, so use Claude Code or Codex.

Information

updated Nov 2, 2026

Repository: riekelt/technical-writer
Folder: plugins/technical-writer/skills/reviewing-technical-prose

riekelt/technical-writer skills.sh

Sources

Docs, issue trackers and discussions this page is built from.

Show all 5

README · github.com
marketplace.json · github.com
reviewing-technical-prose on skills.sh · skills.sh
SKILL.md · github.com
LICENSE · github.com