Reformats Markdown so it reads well in iA Writer. iA Writer renders headings and prose beautifully; emphasis and decoration are noise.
When to use
- Notes, scripts, briefs, posts, or reference docs read in iA Writer.
- Cleaning up agent-generated Markdown that overuses bold, italics, callouts, and rules.
- Any file under
context/,projects/,sops/, orscratch/in this workspace.
Process
- Pick the target from
$ARGUMENTS, a pasted block, or the named file. - Preserve meaning and structure. This is formatting, not rewriting.
- Apply the rules below.
- If a file path was given, overwrite it. Otherwise return the formatted text only.
Rules
Strip
- Bold (
**...**) — remove unless it marks a true term-of-art definition. - Italic (
*...*,_..._) — remove unless it's a title, foreign word, or genuine stress that changes meaning. - Blockquote callouts (
>) used for emphasis — convert to plain prose. Keep blockquotes only for actual quotations. - Horizontal rules (
---) between sections — let headings do the work. - Inline emoji and decorative symbols.
- Trailing labels like
**Why:**,**Note:**,**Critical:**— fold into the sentence. - "Bold-label + colon + text" bullets — rewrite as plain prose or a plain bullet.
Keep
- Headings. Use
#,##,###. One#per document. - Lists, but only when the content is genuinely enumerable (steps, options, items). Convert decorative lists to prose.
- Code blocks and inline code for code, paths, commands, identifiers.
- Links in standard
[text](url)form. - Real quotations as blockquotes.
Prose
- Prefer paragraphs over bullets when ideas connect.
- One blank line between paragraphs. Two blank lines before a new
##section. - Straight quotes (
",'), not curly. - Em dash
—with no surrounding spaces, or just use a comma or period. - Sentence case for headings, not Title Case.
Verification
- No bold or italic except where a rule above allows it.
- No
---separators. - Headings carry the structure; prose carries the content.
- Lists exist only where enumeration is real.
- Meaning unchanged.