Help a reader understand a problem, challenge the reasoning, and make or record a decision. Narrative means connected reasoning in prose, not decorative storytelling. Amazon's conventions are a useful starting point; respect the receiving team's own written culture. These are original scaffolds, not official Amazon templates.
When not to use
- Use
adr-authoringfor durable architecture decisions andincident-learningfor incident analysis. Add an executive cover memo only when useful; retain the underlying artifact's structure and evidence. - Use
technical-documentationfor instructions and runbooks,writers-helperfor general manuscript craft, anddocumentsfor rendered office files. - Use
product-discoveryorproduct-methodologywhen the missing work is understanding the problem or testing demand. A polished memo cannot supply that evidence.
Workflow
- Establish the reading contract. Identify the reader, decision or learning goal, decision owner, deadline, known local conventions, and meeting length or async window. Use supplied context before asking. If a missing detail changes the recommendation, ask one focused question; otherwise state a reasonable assumption and draft. Do not turn intake into an interview by default.
- Choose and explain the form in one sentence. Respect an explicitly requested artifact; explain a mismatch and offer a better fit without silently substituting. Use the routing table below. Read form and length guidance when choosing between forms, planning pages, or adapting to another organization.
- Build the argument before polishing. State the customer or stakeholder problem, relevant baseline, credible alternatives (including continuing as-is), proposed mechanism, costs, risks, uncertainty, and what decision is needed. Separate observed facts, assumptions, forecasts, and invented illustration. Keep citations near claims; identify missing denominators, dates, costs, or sources instead of inventing them. Preserve contradictory findings and explain what they change. With sparse evidence, propose a bounded test or conditional decision rather than a confident rollout. For a test, specify proposed scope, duration or review date, owner, and outcome evidence to inspect. Label unsupplied dates and thresholds as proposals; do not leave the checkpoint as an indefinite request for more evidence.
- Draft for this audience. Load only the selected template. Use paragraphs to connect evidence to consequences. Use headings, compact tables, lists, charts, and appendices when they reduce reader effort; do not turn slides into bullet walls. Define specialist terms for unfamiliar readers and retain precise terms for experts. Keep decision-critical caveats in the body. Templates are starting points; omit irrelevant headings and add what the decision actually needs.
- Revise for human reading. Read the revision tests for every draft or revision. Run the argument, evidence, paragraph, and read-aloud passes. Preserve the writer's voice and legitimate technical language. Revise actual reasoning and sentences; do not use banned-word lists, fixed sentence lengths, made-up readability scores, or synonym swapping as a substitute for judgment.
- Design review and closure. For a meeting or async review, read reading and decision practices. Name the decision owner, reading arrangement, questions to resolve, and where the outcome will live. Allow dissent; do not manufacture consensus. Writing a memo does not authorize sending it, publishing it, or scheduling a meeting.
Form routing
| Main reader need | Default form and reason | Load when drafting |
|---|---|---|
| Choose a strategy, resource allocation, staffing plan, or operating change | Decision/strategy narrative: compare choices and consequences | Narrative template |
| Explore a future customer experience, product, service, or process | PR/FAQ: work backwards from value to hard feasibility questions | PR/FAQ template |
| Decide a narrow, bounded question with limited context | Short decision brief: keep decision overhead proportionate | Brief template |
| Inspect operating results, learn from an incident, approve technical design, or execute a procedure | Retain the business-review, incident, design, ADR, or procedure form; add narrative rationale where useful | Form boundaries |
Non-negotiable distinctions
- Six pages is a ceiling, not a requirement. Amazon's 2024 shareholder letter describes a maximum six-page narrative; do not pad two pages of substance to six. Local rules may differ. No universal font, word count, or heading sequence is established here.
- A press release is not the whole PR/FAQ. The future release states customer value; customer and internal FAQs test the proposal. Mark all imagined quotes and future claims as hypothetical. Never present them as testimony or shipped capability.
- Page estimates are not pagination. Markdown cannot prove a rendered page count. If actual compliance matters, declare paper size, font, margins, spacing and appendix treatment, then render and inspect. Never shrink type or move essential risks out of the body to make the count fit. Label unrendered lengths as estimates.
- Recommendations are not corporate rules. Read sources and claim boundaries when explaining provenance or making claims about a company's practices. Attribute practitioner guidance. Independent written cultures are not presumed Amazon adoptions.
- Persuasiveness must preserve truth. If asked to make a weak case sound certain, strengthen the reasoning and state the gaps. Do not inflate demand, suppress counterevidence, invent numbers, or conceal uncertainty.
Supporting material
Read synthetic worked examples when the user needs an illustration or the draft suffers from inflated claims or abstract prose. Every example is invented and generic. Do not reuse personal, client, interview, or confidential material in public examples.
Completion and exit conditions
Deliver the requested draft or revision, a brief form rationale when relevant, material assumptions and evidence gaps, and the review/decision arrangement if requested. Report actual pagination status honestly. For a revision, briefly explain the substantive changes rather than claiming an objective style score.
Stop when the artifact supports its stated reading and decision goal. If evidence cannot support the requested conclusion, deliver a qualified draft or an evidence request with the consequence for the decision. After two non-converging revision passes, name the unresolved audience or argument choice instead of endlessly polishing.