natural-center-extraction

Natural Center Extraction

Every sufficiently long artifact has a passage where its energies converge — the block a reader quotes, a trailer cuts to, an editor pulls. This skill finds that block by scoring rather than vibes, and returns it verbatim with the evidence for why it wins.

Why this exists

Excerpt selection is usually done by skimming, which favors openings and recency. Algorithmic scoring over all contiguous candidates surfaces centers that skimming misses — the buried turn in hour two of a transcript, the paragraph where argument and feeling finally coincide. The output feeds distribution work (shorts, pull-quotes, abstracts) with a defensible selection rather than a taste call.

The five axes

Axis	What it measures	High-scoring signals
pathos	felt intensity	stakes made personal; vulnerability; register shifts; concrete sensory detail
logos	argumentative force	a claim completed in-block (setup → turn → consequence); evidence meeting assertion
ethos	voice authority	the speaker most distinctly themselves; earned credibility on display; coinages dense
kairos	timeliness/pivot	the moment the piece turns; before/after asymmetry; decision points; reversals
density	compression	ideas-per-sentence; no warm-up or wind-down inside the block; every line load-bearing

Each axis scored 0–10 per candidate block. Axes are scored independently then combined — a block must not be pre-selected because one axis shouts.

Workflow

1. Normalize and segment

• Normalize the source to numbered units (paragraphs for prose; speaker-turns for transcripts; beats for scripts).
• Generate candidate blocks: all contiguous runs whose length fits the target ±30% (sliding window). For long sources, pre-filter with a cheap density pass to a candidate set of 15–40 blocks before full scoring.

2. Score every candidate

• Score each block on all five axes with one-line evidence per axis ("kairos 9: the 'and then I stopped' reversal lands mid-block").
• Contiguity is a hard constraint: no stitching, no elisions, no [...]. The Natural Center is found, not assembled.
• Compute the composite. Default: equal weights. Named intents shift weights — trailer/short → pathos+kairos ×1.5; abstract → logos+density ×1.5; bio/about → ethos ×1.5. State the weighting used.

3. Break ties structurally

When composites tie (within ~5%):

• Prefer the block that survives decontextualization — read it cold; does it work without the surrounding pages?
• Prefer complete arcs (in-block setup and payoff) over blocks that borrow setup from outside.
• Prefer the later block when scores tie exactly — late convergence usually means the whole work feeds it.

4. Emit the result

# Natural Center — {source} ({date})
**Block:** units {n}–{m} ({word-count}w, target {t})  |  **Weighting:** {profile}

> {the block, verbatim, contiguous}

## Scoring table
| Block | pathos | logos | ethos | kairos | density | Σ |
|-------|--------|-------|-------|--------|---------|---|
| u12–u15 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 9 | 8 | 39 |  ← NATURAL CENTER
| u03–u06 | 8 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 30 |
| …top 5 candidates… |

## Justification
{one paragraph: why this block; which axes carried it; what the runner-up
lacked; per-axis evidence lines for the winner}

• Always include the runner-up comparison — the justification is only credible against a named alternative.
• Record the source span precisely so downstream cuts (video timestamps, page cites) can locate it.

5. Optional: multi-center mode

For serialized distribution (a thread, a cut-down series), re-run with the winner's span masked to find secondary centers. Label them C2, C3 — never promote a secondary to "the" center; the hierarchy is part of the finding.

Anti-patterns

• Stitching a better block than the author wrote. Ellipses disqualify the result; contiguity is the constraint that keeps the method honest.
• Scoring only the passages that caught your eye. The method's value is exhaustive candidate coverage; eye-catching passages are the skim bias this skill exists to defeat.
• One axis masquerading as five. If the winner leads every axis, re-check the scoring — axes are designed to disagree; convergence is the finding, not the default.
• Ignoring the target length. A brilliant 900-word block is a failed extraction when the ask was a 60-second short; fit is part of the score.
• Editing the block "lightly" on output. Verbatim means verbatim; cleanup belongs to the downstream format pass, clearly marked as derivative.