riff

Riff: A Claude Plugin for Writing Personal Essays

What is this?

This plugin is a toolkit to help people with the process of writing personal essays in collaboration with Claude. There are nine skills that are part of it: Sort, Sequence, Compose, Critique, Revise, Copyedit, Title, Checkpoint, and Riff. Together, they contain almost everything I know about writing in general, framed specifically to make writing with an LLM more intuitive through different steps. Each skill works on its own, though seven of the nine skills are also designed to work together in a chain.

Why does this exist?

The idea behind this plugin is pretty simple. I wanted to distill the ways I've found LLMs helpful in my personal writing process over the years, and formalize those flows into a set of skills for myself, then open-source everything for other people to use.

What do the skills actually do?

/sort

This skill takes unstructured material like notes, bullet points, or voice memos and distills that into a set of core points. It assesses the type of material you're working with, consolidates overlapping ideas, and preserves your original language and phrasing. Anything that doesn't fit the main structure goes into a "junk drawer" so nothing gets dropped. When it's done, it'll nudge you toward /sequence if you want to explore how those points might evolve into an essay, or it will suggest that you take time to think about the sorted points first if the underlying material is complex.

/sequence

This skill takes sorted points and helps you figure out how to arrange them into an essay. Before proposing structures, it asks what's driving you to write i.e. whether you want to make an argument, tell a story, explain something, or aren't sure yet. If it detects a genuine structural tension in the material (like competing throughlines), it'll ask a follow up to help you choose a direction. Then it proposes one to three structural options depending on what the material supports. When you've picked a direction, it points you toward /compose.

/compose

This skill writes a full personal essay from structured notes in your voice. If you don't have a style profile yet, it asks for a writing sample to build one (you can upload a file, share a link, or paste text directly). This profile is saved and reused across sessions. It then asks where the essay will be published (Substack, LinkedIn, X, or other) and how long it should be, and those answers are used to calibrate tone and length. After the draft is written, this skill will either suggest sitting with what you've got or it will point you toward /critique for an honest assessment.

/critique

This skill gives an honest assessment of a piece of writing. It opens with the single most important thing to fix, then works through remaining observations in descending order of severity. It evaluates originality, argument quality, fluff, tone, and vulnerability to criticism, focusing on the dimensions that are most relevant to your specific piece. It closes with three simulated social media reactions to show how the piece might land in public. The skill will direct you from here as it sees fit, either to the next step with /revise, or if the feedback points to structural problems, it'll suggest going back to /sort or /sequence rather than pushing forward.

/revise

This skill takes a draft and a set of feedback and produces a stronger draft. It implements feedback point by point while preserving your voice and everything that was already working in the underlying essay. It can push back on feedback it disagrees with rather than blindly implementing everything, and it surfaces those disagreements clearly in its change summary. If the feedback reveals foundational problems, it'll say so and recommend stepping back in the pipeline rather than polishing something that isn't ready. When it's done, it asks whether you'd like to move to /copyedit for a final polish, take another revision pass, or step away and read the draft on your own first.

/copyedit

This skill does a close read of a piece of writing to check for grammar issues, punctuation errors, and sentence rhythm. If the piece still needs structural work, it'll say so and point you toward other skills for continued iteration. It verifies every issue before flagging it to avoid false positives, and if you have a style profile, it reads that first so it doesn't flatten your voice. Each suggestion cites an existing section, states its proposed change to that section, and gives one sentence of reasoning for that change. It can implement whatever changes you like, then when you're happy with the edits, it points you toward /title to help name the piece.

/title