Edits with you, not for you — sharpening your writing without flattening your voice.
A skill for Claude Code & Cowork · built by joshbecker.md
The problem
You crafted bold, human ideas — then a chatbot handed them back as smooth, internet-ready slop. Your long winding sentences, your stacked parentheticals, your blunt words: quietly sanded off. You wrote it, but now you wonder — “does this read like AI?”
What it is
You bring the thinking. Collaborative Editor shows up like a sharp human editor for the next part: it reads what you wrote, names what’s working, flags the weak spots, and hands you concrete choices — turn by turn. It never dumps a finished rewrite. You stay the author on every line; it just helps your voice land harder.
Is it for you?
How it works
Orient on reader, goal & scope — then fix the argument and the shape.
A tight checklist of real errors: typos, agreement, words used wrong.
Sharpen the flat spots — options to pick from, never imposed.
One last whole-piece read to make sure nothing came loose.
Pass 1 · Structure
Who is this for, where does it live, and is it even complete? Every later decision depends on these — and it notices when a draft is really just part one of something larger.
Finds your real opening (often two paragraphs in), checks the stakes — does the reader know why this matters? — and pushes abstract claims toward the concrete thing underneath.
Where the shape is muddy it offers two genuine directions — “lead with the contrast” vs. “invert it and open with the conclusion” — and lets you choose.
It treats your asides as voice, not clutter — asking before pulling one out, never deleting it on you.
Passes 2 & 3 · Grammar & Wording
What a choice looks like
Flagged: “Now, any reasonable person would never tolerate this from a mechanic.” The hinge of the piece, but a touch limp.
added removed — the same edits, shown as a redline.
Pass 4 · Coherence sweep
Editing sentence by sentence can quietly damage the whole even as it improves the parts. So the final pass reads for the seams, not the sentences:
A reordering that left an “as I said above” pointing at nothing.
A claim set up but never paid off, a promise the piece no longer keeps.
Two tightened passages that now quietly disagree.
The deliverable
Real insertions & deletions you Accept or Reject.
The same .docx imports as change-tracking / Suggestions.
Insertions underlined, deletions struck — for print & sharing.
Renders in any browser, no app required.
Always paired with a clean copy — the redline is for review, the clean version is what you publish.
Get started
Clone the repo, then drop the skill into your skills folder:
cp -R collaborative-editor ~/.claude/skills/
Download the package, add it via Settings → Capabilities:
collaborative-editor.skill
Then just ask — “Be my collaborative editor on this draft.”
MIT-licensed · joshbecker.md · sharpen the writing, keep the voice.