Shaping Articles

<what-to-do>

The user has passed (or will pass) a markdown file of raw material. Treat it as the input pile: anything from a tidy list of fragments to a wall of unstructured prose to a transcript. The format does not matter. Read it end-to-end before doing anything else.

Then run a shaping session that produces a separate article document. This is exploit: the exploring is done, the pile is fixed: commit to a structure and mine the pile to fill it. Do not edit the raw material file: it is read-only to this skill.

If the user did not say where to save the article, ask once and remember the path.

</what-to-do> <supporting-info>

The loop

1. Read the pile. Read the input file in full. Form a sense of what's in it.
2. Establish the prerequisites. Settle with the user what the reader knows walking in: the concepts that are grounded from the start. Everything else must be grounded by a block before a later block can lean on it. See Grounding.
3. Draft 2, 3 candidate openings. Each opening should imply a different thesis or angle for the article. Show all of them. Force the user to pick or compose a hybrid. The chosen opening defines what the rest of the article must do.
4. Grow paragraph by paragraph. After the opening lands, ask "given this opening, what does the reader need to hear next?" Pull material from the pile to answer. The next block may only lean on grounded concepts, and grounds new ones as it lands. Argue about the form the next block takes: a paragraph, a list, a table, a callout, a quote, a code block. Each format choice should be deliberate and defensible.
5. Append to the article file as you go. Don't batch. Write each agreed paragraph or block immediately so the user can see the article taking shape.
6. Loop step 4 until the article is done. The user decides when it's done.

Grounding