Find the real reason a piece of writing isn't landing
"It needs work" isn't a diagnosis — clarity, structure, and voice problems each need a different fix.
- Use it for
- Anyone with a piece of writing that isn't working, who isn't sure exactly why.
A piece of writing that isn't landing gets diagnosed as vaguely "needing work," which doesn't point toward a fix — clarity problems (the reader can't follow it), structure problems (the ideas are right but in the wrong order), and voice problems (it's clear and ordered but doesn't sound like anyone) each need a genuinely different edit. This prompt finds which one it actually is before editing anything.
When not to use this
If you already know specifically what's wrong — a section that's clearly out of order, or a paragraph that's clearly confusing — skip straight to fixing it. This is for when something's off and you can't yet say what.
Did this work?
You know specifically whether the problem is clarity, structure, or voice — not just that the piece "needs work" in some general sense.
Tested on claude-opus-5. Evidence status is draft; it moves to battle-tested only on recorded runs, never by hand.