Setting Up an AI Blog Writer: How I Defined Author Voice and Tone with my-blog-writing SKILL
Introduction
When AI writes a blog article, the content may be accurate but the writing can feel detached — as if it was written by someone else. The phrasing is generic, applicable to anyone, and the author’s specific perspective or experience is not visible. To address this, I created a file called my-blog-writing SKILL that defines the author’s voice and tone for AI to follow when writing blog articles.
I cover general skill-file design in Defining Specialized AI Tasks with SKILL.md. This article stays focused on the author voice, prohibited expressions, and review checks specific to blog writing.
What my-blog-writing SKILL Is
my-blog-writing SKILL is a file that defines the procedure, writing style, prohibited expressions, and checkpoints for AI to follow when writing blog articles.
The concept is similar to a recipe. Instead of explaining “write in polite style, avoid exaggeration, use ‘I’ as the first person, and don’t use imperative titles” every time, I wrote those instructions into a file once. When AI references this file before writing an article, it follows the defined standards without requiring me to re-explain the rules in every conversation.
What I Defined in the Skill File
Author Perspective
The first rule I defined was: “When referring to the author, always use ‘I.’ Do not refer to the author in the third person in the body of an article.”
Before I created the skill file, AI-generated articles sometimes contained third-person expressions like “Shiori examined…” or “The author has concluded that…” By explicitly defining the rule that only the first-person “I” is used when writing as the author, this problem went away.
Writing Style
For Japanese, I defined “use polite style (desu/masu form) consistently.” For English, I defined “use only ‘I’ as the first person; do not use ‘we,’ ‘our,’ or ‘us.’”
Without explicit instruction, polite style in Japanese can shift to plain style (da/de aru form) mid-article. In English, “we” was frequently appearing even though the writing represents one author’s perspective. Defining both as rules significantly reduced style inconsistencies.
List of Prohibited Expressions
I defined the following categories as prohibited expressions.
- Exaggerated expressions: “revolutionary,” “overwhelming,” “like magic”
- Colloquial adverbs: “sakkuto” (casually), “zakkuri” (roughly), “gattsuri” (thoroughly)
- Figurative danger expressions: “pitfall,” “landmine,” “quicksand”
- Personal blog-style title patterns: “I tried X,” “I got hooked on X”
- Imperative or provocative titles: “Stop doing X,” “The truth about X”
Defining these as a list means that rather than checking individually after an article is generated, these expressions are less likely to appear in the first place.
E-E-A-T Checklist
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is a set of criteria for evaluating article credibility. The skill file includes a checklist defining what each element should contribute to an article.
The item I emphasize most is “Experience.” I explicitly define the rules: “Do not write about things I have not actually experienced as if I had” and “Use expressions that distinguish between investigation and information synthesis versus firsthand experience.”
How Article Quality Changed Before and After Defining the Skill
Before the skill file existed, every time I asked AI to generate an article, I would add instructions such as “write in polite style,” “avoid exaggerated expressions,” and “use only ‘I’ as the first person.” If any part of the instruction was omitted, the quality of that aspect would drop.
After defining the skill file, the only instruction needed per article became “reference my-blog-writing SKILL and write the article.” All the rules apply as soon as the skill file is referenced, so quality variation caused by omitting instructions is eliminated.
The skill file is also stored as a file in the repository, so its revision history is trackable. This makes it easy to manage the principle that “when someone adds or changes a rule, it applies to articles from that point onward.”
Summary
my-blog-writing SKILL is a file that defines author perspective, writing style, prohibited expressions, and an E-E-A-T checklist. Referencing the skill file unifies the standards AI uses when writing articles and eliminates the need to repeat the same instructions every time. The design intent of this skill file is to define “how the same author’s voice appears no matter what article is written” as a file that can be consistently managed.