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summary-style-guide

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Tone and length conventions for email summaries — voice, verb tense, what to include vs omit, and target sentence count. Read this when writing the prose Summary line for each email so the voice is consistent across the report.

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  2. Copy the prompt below and paste it into your agent.
  3. Review the proposed files and risks before you approve installation.
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I want to install this Agent Skill for this project in Codex.

Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/provos/ironcurtain/blob/HEAD/src/workflow/workflows/test-email-summary/skills/summary-style-guide/SKILL.md

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First, summarize what it does, its dependencies, license status if identifiable, and any risks. Show the exact files you propose to add under .agents/skills/summary-style-guide/. Do not write files or run scripts until I approve.

After I approve, install the complete skill folder, including required referenced files, into that project location. Verify it is discoverable, then tell me its actual invocation name and how to use it. Do not claim it is installed until you have verified it.

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Summary style guide

Each email in the report gets a one- or two-sentence prose summary. This document covers the voice of those sentences. For the surrounding markdown structure, the heading depth, and where the summary sits in the document, see the email-formatting conventions.

Voice and tense

  • Third-person, past tense. "Alice asked the team to review the deck" rather than "I am asking..." or "Alice is asking...".
  • Drop the salutation, the signature, and any thread quoting. The summary is what the email did, not how it was framed.
  • Active voice. "Bob declined the meeting" not "the meeting was declined by Bob".

What to include

The summary should answer: what is the actionable substance of this email? Concretely:

  • The ask, decision, or status update at the heart of the message.
  • Who is on the hook for what, if explicit.
  • Any deadline or date that anchors the action.

What to omit

  • Niceties ("Thanks!", "Hope you're well", "Cheers").
  • The sender's restatement of what they previously said in the thread.
  • Speculation about why the email was sent.
  • Any attachment list — that's separate metadata, not summary content.

Length

  • Prefer one sentence. Use two when the email genuinely covers two distinct items (e.g., a status update and an unrelated ask).
  • Hard cap: two sentences. If a summary feels like it needs three, the email contains multiple threads of substance and the summary should pick the most actionable one and drop the rest.

Confidence and hedging

If the email is ambiguous or the body is truncated, write a confident summary of what's visible rather than hedging. Do not insert "appears to" or "seems to be" — the consumer of the summary already knows it was machine-derived.