A rambling doc buries its point. In Claude Cowork this skill opens the real document, restructures it around the reader's decision, tightens the prose, and hands back a clean copy with a summary of what changed — so the author sees the edit, not a lecture about editing.
What This Skill Produces
- The restructured document — reorganised (point-first), tightened, and consistently formatted, saved as a new Doc/file
- A change summary — what moved, what was cut, what was surfaced, and any content gaps the author must fill
- The one-line thesis — the single sentence the doc now leads with
Required Inputs
Ask for these if not provided:
- The doc — a Drive/Docs link or an uploaded file
- The reader and their decision — who reads this and what they must do after — structure follows the decision
- How aggressive — light tighten vs full reorganise; keep-voice vs rewrite
Framework: The Restructure Pass
- BLUF — bottom line up front: the ask/answer in the first lines, not the last.
- One idea per section — headings that state conclusions, not topics.
- Cut the filler — throat-clearing, hedging, and restated context go.
- Surface the buried — the real decision or risk hiding in paragraph nine moves up.
- Make gaps explicit — mark
[FILL IN]rather than inventing missing facts.
Execution (Cowork)
- Open the doc — via the Google Drive/Docs connector, read the full document (headings, structure, content). Never edit from a paraphrase.
- Diagnose — find the actual thesis, the reader's decision, the buried point, and the filler.
- Restructure — reorder to point-first, rewrite headings as conclusions, tighten prose, keep the author's voice unless told to rewrite. Preserve every load-bearing fact; never fabricate to smooth a transition.
- Write a new copy — create a new Doc/file (e.g. "[title] — restructured") with the result; leave the original untouched.
- Emit the change summary artifact and list any
[FILL IN]gaps for the author.
Guardrails: never overwrite the source — always a new copy; preserve facts and citations exactly; mark invented-needs as gaps, don't fill them; if the connector is unauthorised, produce the restructured text inline and say the copy couldn't be written.
Output Format
Thesis (new opening line)
…
Change summary
| Change | From → To | Why |
|---|
Structure (new outline)
- [conclusion-heading] …
Gaps for the author
[FILL IN]— what's missing and where
Output
- New document: [link/name] — original left unchanged
Quality Checks
- The restructured doc leads with the point (BLUF), not background
- Every heading states a conclusion, not a topic
- No fact, number, or citation was altered or invented
- The original file is untouched; the result is a new copy
- Missing content is marked
[FILL IN], not fabricated
Anti-Patterns
- Overwriting the original. Always a new copy.
- Inventing content to fill a thin section — mark the gap.
- Topic headings ("Background", "Details") instead of conclusions.
- Advice instead of an edit — this skill returns the rewritten doc.
Example Trigger Phrases
- "Clean up and restructure my draft in Drive."
- "Make this doc readable — point first — in Cowork."
- "Tighten this for exec review and give me a new copy."
- "Reorganise my proposal doc around what the reader has to decide."