tailord
Tailor your drafts to your voice. A Claude Code skill with custom Vale linting rules and a multi-agent editorial team that strips AI writing patterns from prose, so your drafts read like you wrote them on a good day.
What it does
When you invoke /tailord or ask Claude Code to draft a piece, the skill:
- Gathers context via structured questions (format, depth, topic)
- Researches using Exa MCP or WebSearch (for longer pieces)
- Loads your voice from a personal voice profile and universal writing mechanics
- Builds a section blueprint with your approval
- Drafts with two candidate openings for you to choose
- Lints through vale with custom AuthenticVoice rules (hard gate: zero errors/warnings)
- Reviews via a multi-agent editorial team running in parallel
- Revises based on editorial triage with your input
Quick pieces (Short take + Quick hit) skip the editorial team and research steps.
Requirements
- Claude Code CLI
vale CLI — auto-detected on session start. If missing, the skill prompts you to install before its first lint pass. Pre-install with brew install vale (macOS) or snap install vale (Linux), or let scripts/setup.sh install it for you.
Installation
Requires Claude Code 1.0.33+. Check with claude --version.
Option A: Plugin system (recommended)
Inside Claude Code, run two commands. The first registers the catalog, the second installs the skill.
Step 1 — Register the catalog:
/plugin marketplace add onlydole/tailord
Step 2 — Install the skill:
/plugin install tailord@onlydole-tailord
You can also browse available plugins interactively with /plugin and look under the Discover tab.
Option B: Manual clone
git clone https://github.com/onlydole/tailord.git ~/.claude/plugins/tailord
Then register it in your Claude Code settings by adding the plugin path. Open ~/.claude/settings.json and add:
{
"plugins": ["~/.claude/plugins/tailord"]
}
Setup
After installation, run the interactive setup skill to create your voice profile:
/tailord-setup
This walks you through a conversational interview to define your writing voice, audience, and style preferences. It generates your personal voice.md, reference-personal.md, and vocabulary files, and runs Vale setup automatically.
Alternatively, you can run the setup script manually:
# From the plugin directory
skills/tailord/scripts/setup.sh
The manual script installs prerequisites and copies templates, but you'll need to edit voice.md by hand.
Optional integrations
- Exa MCP (research): If you've enabled the claude.ai Exa connector at the account level, the skill will use it for cleaner web search and tweet/article retrieval during research. If the connector isn't enabled, the skill falls back to
WebSearch/WebFetch automatically — no install or API key needed.
Customization
Voice profile
The most important customization. Edit skills/tailord/references/voice.md to define:
- Your identity: who you are, what you write about
- Your audience: who reads your work, the relationship
- Voice characteristics: the traits that define your style
The template provides good defaults. Adjust them to match your natural writing style.
Personal reference material
Edit skills/tailord/references/reference-personal.md to add:
- Voice patterns with examples from your published work
- Learnings from editorial sessions (mistakes to avoid)
- Narrative flow patterns that work for your content
- Content-type specific editorial learnings
Vocabulary
Add personal names and niche terms to skills/tailord/vale/styles/config/vocabularies/AuthenticVoice/accept.local.txt to suppress false spelling errors. The lint script merges this with the universal accept.txt before each run.
What stays private
These files are gitignored and never leave your machine:
| File | Contains |
|---|
references/voice.md | Your identity, audience, voice characteristics |
references/reference-personal.md | Your editorial learnings and voice examples |
accept.local.txt | Personal names and terms |
Vale rules
The vale/ directory contains three style packages:
- AuthenticVoice (custom): Rules covering banned vocabulary, filler phrases, AI writing tells, fabricated experience, emotion directives, transition formulas, and more
- Google: Standard Google developer documentation style
- Vale: Built-in vale rules
See skills/tailord/references/vale-rules.md for per-rule fixing guidance.
Running vale manually
skills/tailord/scripts/lint.sh your-draft.md
The script outputs JSON. Use --skip-prereqs for faster repeated runs.
The editorial team
For substantial pieces, the skill spins up a parallel editorial team of four consolidated reviewers:
