Formalizer

formalizer Plugin

Rewrite text into a different tone or register. 21 tones, 1-5 intensity, anchored to register theory.

Overview

A skill, two commands, and an isolated subagent for tone-shifting prose. Triggers naturally on phrases like "make this more professional" or "unwaffle this", or via namespaced commands. The compare/iterate workflow runs in a subagent so working drafts never pollute the parent context.

Key features:

• 21 tones grouped: formal, informal/emotional, structural, domain-specific
• Register level 1-5 anchored to Joos's Five Clocks (intimate → frozen)
• Preservation rules for markdown, code fences, quotes, and proper nouns
• Anti-patterns prevent disclaimers, moralising, and meta-commentary
• Context-isolated formalizer-compare subagent for batch and --iterate modes
• Academic references bundled (Joos, Halliday, Biber, Plain Language, Hyland, Wydick, Brown & Levinson, Rosenberg)
• Not a generator — refuses to draft new content from scratch

Commands

• /formalizer:rewrite [tone] [level] [text] — single-tone inline rewrite
• /formalizer:compare [tones...] [levels...] [--iterate] [text] — batch/compare via subagent (side-by-side variants)
• /formalizer:pipeline <tones...> [level | tone:level] [--show-stages] [text] — chain tones sequentially, return one merged output

Tones (21 total)

Formal: professional, formal, technical, academic, legal

Informal / emotional: informal, polite, less snarky, angry, calm, passionate, sarcastic, sociable, empathetic, diplomatic

Structural: accessible, readable, concise, grammatical, bullets, thesaurus

Domain: marketing, irish-english

See skills/formalizer/SKILL.md for full definitions and skills/formalizer/references/tone-examples.md for one before/after per tone.

Register rubric

Level	Joos register	Application
1	intimate	Barely perceptible nudge
2	casual	Light application
3	consultative	Default — apply clearly
4	formal	Strong; lean in
5	frozen	Maximum coherent intensity

Quick start

# Inline via natural language (skill triggers)
> make this more professional: the report is overdue and i'm pretty annoyed
→ The report is overdue, which is causing concern. Could we resolve this today?

# Single-tone via command
/formalizer:rewrite concise   The thing is, the report is overdue and I need it today.
→ The report is a week late. Send it today.

# Compare via command (side-by-side variants)
/formalizer:compare professional,diplomatic,concise   The report is overdue.

# Iterate via command
/formalizer:compare diplomatic --iterate   The report is overdue.

# Pipeline via command (chain tones into one merged output)
/formalizer:pipeline grammatical readable concise   The report is overdue.

# Pipeline with per-stage levels
/formalizer:pipeline grammatical:3 concise:5   The report is overdue.

# Pipeline with staged verification
/formalizer:pipeline grammatical readable concise --show-stages   The report is overdue.

Triggering

The skill auto-triggers on rewrite verbs (rewrite, reword, polish, soften, sharpen, formalise, unwaffle, tidy) combined with any of the 21 tone names. It deliberately does NOT trigger on generative requests like "write me a new essay about X" — this is a rewriter, not a generator.

References

Academic grounding for the tone taxonomy and the 1-5 register rubric is in skills/formalizer/references/sources.md. Cite when producing rewrites for academic work.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.