---
name: complex-to-simple-narrative-rewriter
description: "Rewrites technical, jargon-heavy, or data-dense copy into clear, credible, audience-appropriate narrative without sacrificing accuracy — preserving every factual claim while cutting cognitive load. Delivers a rewritten version, a before/after comparison, a flagged-claims log, and a readability scorecard. Use when simplifying complex documentation, technical explanations, data reports, or dense product copy for a broader or less specialized audience."
argument-hint: "[source-text] [target-audience]"
allowed-tools: ["Read"]
---

# Complex-to-Simple Narrative Rewriter

## Purpose
Transform technical or data-heavy source text into clear, readable copy calibrated for a specific audience — without dropping, softening, or distorting any factual claim. Solves the recurring problem where subject-matter accuracy and reader comprehension pull in opposite directions, leaving copy that's either correct-but-impenetrable or readable-but-loose.

## When to Use
Invoke this skill when the user asks to:
- Rewrite technical documentation or engineering copy for a non-technical audience
- Simplify a data report, research summary, or analytics finding into plain narrative
- Translate jargon-heavy product copy into language customers actually understand
- Make a dense whitepaper, spec sheet, or compliance text accessible without losing precision
- Adapt expert-level content for executives, prospects, or a general readership
- Clean up copy that's accurate but too complicated for its intended reader

## Inputs Required
Before starting, collect:
- **Source text**: The full passage to rewrite (paste the actual copy, not a summary)
- **Target audience**: Who will read this — e.g., executives, prospects, general public, new employees
- **Reader's baseline knowledge**: What the audience already knows and doesn't know about the subject
- **Purpose of the copy**: Inform, persuade, instruct, or reassure
- **Non-negotiable claims**: Any facts, numbers, or terms that must be preserved exactly
- **Length constraint**: Target word count or "as concise as possible while complete"
- **Tone**: Formal / conversational / confident / neutral-institutional

If reader baseline or purpose is missing, assume an informed-but-non-expert reader whose goal is to understand and act, and note the assumption.

## Instructions

### Step 1: Extract and Lock the Factual Claims
Before rewriting a single sentence, inventory what must survive.
- List every distinct factual claim in the source: statistics, causal statements, technical mechanisms, conditions, caveats, and defined terms
- Flag any claim that is qualified ("up to," "in most cases," "under X conditions") — qualifiers are load-bearing and cannot be silently dropped
- Mark terms that are genuinely technical (must be retained or explicitly defined) vs. jargon that has a plain-language equivalent
- This inventory becomes the accuracy contract: the rewrite must honor every locked claim

### Step 2: Diagnose the Complexity Sources
Identify *why* the source is hard to read — the fix depends on the cause:
- **Lexical complexity**: Jargon, acronyms, nominalizations ("utilization of" → "using")
- **Syntactic complexity**: Long sentences, nested clauses, passive voice hiding the actor
- **Structural complexity**: No hierarchy — everything presented as equally important
- **Cognitive complexity**: Abstract concepts with no concrete anchor; data with no interpretation
- **Density**: Too many claims per sentence, forcing the reader to unpack multiple ideas at once

### Step 3: Apply the Simplification Moves
Rewrite using targeted techniques, matched to the diagnosis:
- **Unpack density**: One idea per sentence. Split any sentence carrying two or more distinct claims.
- **Concrete over abstract**: Replace abstractions with tangible examples, comparisons, or analogies the audience already understands — without introducing a claim not in the source
- **Active voice, named actors**: Say who does what. Convert "errors are reduced" → "the system reduces errors"
- **Contextualize data**: Never leave a number bare. Give it meaning ("40% faster — that's ten minutes saved per report")
- **Define, don't drop**: Retain a technical term only if the audience needs it; then define it inline on first use
- **Build a hierarchy**: Lead with the takeaway, then support it — invert the source if it buries the point
- **Cut, don't dumb down**: Remove filler, hedging, and repetition; simplifying is subtraction of noise, not of substance

### Step 4: Preserve Credibility While Simplifying
Simple copy can read as vague or overstated — guard against both:
- Keep every qualifier from the claim inventory ("up to," "typically," "in tested conditions")
- Do not upgrade a hedged claim into an absolute one ("can help reduce" ≠ "reduces")
- Retain the strongest verifiable specifics — precise numbers and named mechanisms build trust more than adjectives
- Avoid replacing a defensible technical statement with a marketing claim that the source doesn't support

### Step 5: Verify Against the Accuracy Contract
Cross-check the rewrite line by line against the Step 1 inventory:
- Confirm each locked claim appears, with its qualifiers intact
- Confirm no new claim was invented during simplification
- Confirm no number, condition, or causal relationship changed meaning
- Flag any claim you could not preserve without distortion, and note it rather than dropping it silently

### Step 6: Score Readability
Assess the rewrite on measurable dimensions:
- Estimated reading grade level (target: appropriate to the audience — typically grade 7–9 for general, 9–11 for professional)
- Average sentence length (target under 20 words)
- Jargon count remaining (and whether each remaining term is defined)
- Passive-voice instances

## Output Format
- **Structure**: Four labeled sections in order
- **Length**: Rewrite matches the requested length; full deliverable typically 600–1,000 words including analysis
- **Format**: Rewritten copy as clean prose; before/after as a two-column-style comparison; claims log and scorecard as bulleted or tabular lists
- **Sections**:
  1. **Rewritten Copy** — the finished, deliverable-ready text
  2. **Before / After Comparison** — 3–5 representative sentence pairs showing the source and the rewrite side by side
  3. **Flagged-Claims Log** — every preserved claim confirmed, plus any claim that could not be simplified without risk (with explanation)
  4. **Readability Scorecard** — grade level, avg sentence length, remaining jargon (with definition status), passive-voice count
- **Tone**: The rewrite matches the requested audience tone; the analysis sections are direct and editorial

## Quality Checklist
Before delivering output, verify:
- [ ] Every claim from the Step 1 inventory appears in the rewrite, with its qualifiers intact
- [ ] No new factual claim was introduced that the source did not support
- [ ] No number, condition, or causal statement changed meaning between versions
- [ ] Average sentence length in the rewrite is under 20 words
- [ ] Every technical term retained is defined on first use; every droppable jargon term was replaced
- [ ] The Flagged-Claims Log explicitly names any claim that could not be preserved cleanly — nothing was dropped silently

## Notes
- The single most common failure mode is upgrading a hedged claim into an absolute one to make the copy punchier — this trades credibility for polish and often creates legal or factual exposure. Preserve the hedge.
- Data almost always needs interpretation, not just translation: a number the reader can't contextualize is noise, so pair every retained statistic with what it means for them.
- When the audience genuinely needs a technical term (a doctor reading clinical copy, an engineer reading a spec), simplify the surrounding language but keep the term — simplification is about the reader's effort, not a fixed vocabulary list.
- If the source contains a claim that is unclear or possibly inaccurate in the original, flag it rather than smoothing it over — a rewrite is not the place to launder a shaky assertion.

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## How to use this skill

This file is a Claude Code skill in [Anthropic's standard format](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills) — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top.

**Installing in Claude Code:**
- `~/.claude/skills/<folder-name>/SKILL.md` — auto-loads in every session anywhere on your machine (recommended for skills you'll use across multiple projects)
- `<your-project>/.claude/skills/<folder-name>/SKILL.md` — auto-loads only when working in that project (recommended for project-specific skills)

Restart Claude Code or open a new session to register.

**Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:**

1. Drag this file into a new chat, or copy and paste its contents
2. Send your task or request as your next message — the AI will apply the skill where it fits

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