diff --git a/skills/joy-check/references/writing-rubric.md b/skills/joy-check/references/writing-rubric.md index de9bd60..ddb3cac 100644 --- a/skills/joy-check/references/writing-rubric.md +++ b/skills/joy-check/references/writing-rubric.md @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -# Writing Rubric — Joy-Grievance Spectrum +# Writing Rubric: Joy-Grievance Spectrum This rubric applies to human-facing content: blog posts, emails, articles, documentation meant to be read by people. @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ Every paragraph should frame its subject through curiosity, wonder, generosity, ## Subtle Patterns (LLM-only detection) -These patterns are what the regex scanner cannot catch — the primary purpose of LLM analysis: +These patterns are what the regex scanner cannot catch. They are the primary purpose of LLM analysis: - **Defensive disclaimers** ("I'm not accusing anyone", "This isn't about blame"): If the author has to disclaim, the framing is already grievance-adjacent. The disclaimer signals the content that follows is accusatory enough to need a shield. Flag the paragraph and recommend removing both the disclaimer and the accusatory content it shields. - **Accumulative grievance**: Each paragraph is individually mild, but together they build a case for being wronged. A reader who finishes the piece feeling "that person was wronged" has been led through a prosecution. Flag the accumulation pattern and recommend interspersing observations with what the author learned, built, or found interesting. @@ -37,131 +37,134 @@ These patterns are what the regex scanner cannot catch — the primary purpose o ## The Joy Principle -**A difficult experience is not a negative topic.** Seeing your architecture appear elsewhere is interesting. Navigating provenance in the AI age is worth writing about. The topic can involve confusion, surprise, even frustration. +**A difficult experience is not a negative topic.** Failure, confusion, being wrong, losing something. These are all worth writing about. The topic can involve surprise, frustration, even grief. **The framing is what matters.** The same experience can be told as: -- "Someone took my work" (grievance) -- "I saw my patterns show up somewhere unexpected and it made me think about how ideas move now" (joy/curiosity) +- "The project failed because leadership wouldn't listen" (grievance) +- "The project failed and it changed how I understand what makes a team actually work" (joy/curiosity) Both describe the same events. The second frames it through the lens that defines joy-centered content: the specific satisfaction found in understanding something you didn't understand before. -**Joy doesn't mean happiness.** It means engagement, curiosity, the energy of figuring things out. A joy-centered post about a frustrating debugging session isn't happy — but it frames the frustration as the puzzle and the understanding as the reward. That's the lens. +**Joy doesn't mean happiness.** It means engagement, curiosity, the energy of figuring things out. A joy-centered post about a frustrating debugging session isn't happy. It frames the frustration as the puzzle and the understanding as the reward. That's the lens. ## Examples -These examples show the same content reframed from grievance to joy. The substance is identical. Only the framing changes. +These examples show the same content reframed from grievance to joy. Each covers a different topic to demonstrate that the pattern applies broadly. The substance stays. Only the framing changes. -### Example 1: Describing a Difficult Experience +### Example 1: A Project That Failed **GRIEVANCE (FAIL):** ``` -I spent nine months building this system and nobody cared. Then someone -else showed up with the same thing and got all the attention. It felt -unfair. I did the work and they got the credit. +I spent six months building this and leadership killed it. They never +gave it a real chance. The team was understaffed, the deadline was +impossible, and when it didn't ship on time they blamed engineering. ``` **JOY (PASS):** ``` -I've been building and writing about this architecture for about nine -months now. The response has been mostly crickets. Some good conversations, -some pushback, but nothing that made me feel like the ideas were landing. -Then someone posted a system with the same concepts and I got excited. -Someone else got it. +I spent six months on a project that got cancelled. The team was small, +the deadline was ambitious, and we didn't make it. What I didn't expect +was how much I'd learn about what makes a technical bet actually land +versus just being a good idea on paper. ``` -**Why the second works:** The author is an explorer who found something interesting, not a victim cataloguing injustice. "Mostly crickets" is honest without being bitter. "Someone else got it" is generous. +**Why the second works:** The author is a learner extracting insight, not a victim cataloguing injustice. "What I didn't expect" signals curiosity. The failure is acknowledged but framed as the start of understanding. -### Example 2: Discovering Similarity +### Example 2: Finding Someone Solved the Same Problem **GRIEVANCE (FAIL):** ``` -I was shocked to find they had copied my exact architecture. The same -router, the same dispatch pattern, the same four layers. They claimed -they invented it independently, which seems unlikely given the timing. +I was halfway through the implementation when I found an open-source +library that does the exact same thing. Six weeks of work, wasted. +If I'd found it earlier none of this would have happened. ``` **JOY (PASS):** ``` -I went from excited to curious. Because this wasn't just someone building -agents and skills, which plenty of people do. It was the routing -architecture I'd spent months developing and writing about. +Halfway through, I found an open-source library that solved the same +problem. My first reaction was frustration, but then I started reading +their code. They'd made completely different trade-offs than I had, +and comparing the two taught me more about the problem space than +either approach alone. ``` -**Why the second works:** "Excited to curious" is an explorer's arc. No accusation of copying. The observation is about what the author found interesting, not what was done to them. +**Why the second works:** "Started reading their code" is an explorer's response. The parallel work becomes a learning opportunity, not wasted effort. Frustration is acknowledged directly, then moved through. -### Example 3: Discussing How Ideas Spread +### Example 3: Giving Away Work You Could Have Monetized **GRIEVANCE (FAIL):** ``` -If the ideas are going to spread through AI's training data anyway, if -Claude is going to absorb my blog posts and hand the architecture to -people who are unaware of where it came from, then I might as well just -give up trying to get credit. +I open-sourced the whole thing and nobody even starred the repo. People +are using it — I can see the clone stats — but nobody bothers to +contribute back or even say thanks. Open source is a thankless grind. ``` **JOY (PASS):** ``` -This experience helped me realize that the best thing I can do with -these ideas is just put them out there completely. No holding back, -no waiting for the perfect moment. If the patterns are useful, people -should have them. If someone builds something better on top of them, -even better. +I open-sourced it and the response was mostly quiet. Some clones, a +few issues filed, not much else. But every once in a while someone +emails to say it saved them a week of work, and that's a strange kind +of satisfaction, knowing something you built is just quietly useful +somewhere. ``` -**Why the second works:** The decision to release is framed as a positive realization, not a resignation. "Even better" at the end carries forward energy. +**Why the second works:** "Quietly useful" reframes silence as a form of impact. The author finds satisfaction in the work's utility rather than demanding visible reciprocity. -### Example 4: Talking About Credit +### Example 4: Being Passed Over for Recognition **GRIEVANCE (FAIL):** ``` -I've been thinking about why this bothered me, and it's because I -deserve recognition for this work. Nine months of effort should count -for something. +I've been thinking about why this bothered me, and it's because the +work speaks for itself. Two years of contributions and they promoted +someone who joined six months ago. Merit clearly doesn't matter here. ``` **JOY (PASS):** ``` -I've been thinking about what made this experience interesting, and -it's not about credit. I just want to communicate the value as I see -it, and be understood. +I've been thinking about what I actually want from work, and it turns +out "being recognized" is too vague to be useful. What I want is to +work on problems that stretch me, with people who take the craft +seriously. Once I framed it that way, the promotion question got +a lot simpler. ``` -**Why the second works:** Locates the feeling in curiosity ("what made this interesting") not entitlement ("I deserve"). "Be understood" is a human need, not a demand. +**Why the second works:** Locates the feeling in self-knowledge ("what I actually want") not entitlement ("merit should be rewarded"). The author discovers something about themselves rather than building a case against someone else. -### Example 5: The Conclusion +### Example 5: Wrapping Up a Career Transition **GRIEVANCE (FAIL):** ``` -I have no answer for the provenance problem. But I'm going to keep -documenting my work publicly so at least there's a record. If nothing -else, the timestamps speak for themselves. +I left because the industry stopped valuing the kind of deep work I +do. Everything is about speed now, shipping fast, cutting corners. +I refuse to compromise on quality, and if that means moving on, fine. ``` **JOY (PASS):** ``` -I may never be an influencer. I'm probably never going to be known much -outside of the specific things I work on. I just enjoy coming up with -interesting and novel ideas, trying weird things, seeing what sticks. -That's been the most enjoyable part of this whole process. +I left because I wanted to find out what I'd build if I got to choose +the constraints. Turns out the answer is weirder and more interesting +than what I was building before. I don't know where it leads, but the +not-knowing is part of what makes it fun. ``` -**Why the second works:** Ends on what the author enjoys, not what they're defending against. "Seeing what sticks" carries the experimental energy. No timestamps-as-evidence framing. +**Why the second works:** Ends on what the author is moving toward, not what they're escaping from. "The not-knowing is part of what makes it fun" carries experimental energy. No industry-as-villain framing. -### Example 6: Addressing Uncertainty About Origins +### Example 6: Ambiguous Feedback from a Collaborator **GRIEVANCE (FAIL):** ``` -They might not know where the patterns came from. But I do. And the -timeline doesn't lie. +They said the design "needed more thought" but wouldn't say what was +wrong with it. Classic move — vague enough to block progress without +having to commit to an actual opinion. ``` **JOY (PASS):** ``` -Claude doesn't cite its sources. There's no way for any of us to tell -whether our AI-assisted work drew on someone else's blog post or was -synthesized fresh. The honest answer to "where did this architecture -come from?" might be "I built it with Claude and I have no way of knowing what -Claude drew on." That's true for everyone using these tools. Including me. +They said the design "needed more thought," which is the kind of +feedback that's frustrating in the moment but sometimes means there's +something I'm not seeing yet. I went back and sat with it for a day, +and they were right. There was a whole failure mode I'd been +hand-waving past. ``` -**Why the second works:** Includes the author in the same uncertainty. "Including me" is the key phrase. It transforms from "I know and they should know" to "none of us fully know." +**Why the second works:** The author sits with discomfort instead of building a case. "They were right" is generous without being self-deprecating. The frustration is honest but leads to discovery.