spoken-draft-cleanup

Spoken-draft cleanup

The writer dictates essays out loud. The transcript that comes back is the writer's thinking, verbatim — including the "um"s, the restarts, the missing commas, and the words the speech-to-text engine guessed wrong. This skill does exactly one job: make that transcript readable as a draft without changing what the writer said or how they said it. It is mechanical hygiene, not editing.

This is the intake step in the vault's write loop: transcripts/ -> drafts/ ([[conventions|Vault Conventions]] §2). It runs before any [[advisory-edit]] pass. The division of labor is strict — this skill produces a clean draft (status: cleaned) that still sounds 100% like the writer; advisory-edit then critiques that draft without touching it. Cleanup is allowed to alter the text (mechanically); advisory-edit is not.

The one rule that overrides everything

Mechanical only. Preserve voice and form. Never restructure, restyle, or reword. If a change would alter what the writer is saying or how they characteristically say it, you do not make it — you flag it. The writer's word choice, sentence rhythm, paragraph logic, idioms, hedges, jargon, and ordering are all sovereign and out of scope. You are a transcriptionist's assistant, not an editor.

When in doubt about whether a fix is mechanical or editorial: it is editorial. Flag it.

What cleanup MAY do vs MAY NOT do

MAY (mechanical)	MAY NOT (editorial — flag instead, or leave alone)
Delete fillers: "um", "uh", "like", "you know", "I mean" (when filler, not meaning)	Replace a word with a "better" one
Cut false starts and self-corrections, keeping the landing: "the additive— the narrow-sense heritability" -> "the narrow-sense heritability"	Reorder sentences or paragraphs
Cut verbatim repetition the speaker clearly didn't intend: "the the model" -> "the model"	Tighten or shorten for concision
Restore sentence-boundary punctuation: periods, capitalization, question marks	Add transitions, topic sentences, or connective tissue
Insert obvious commas at clause boundaries the speaker plainly paused on	Fix grammar that is part of the writer's spoken voice
Break the wall of text into paragraphs at the speaker's clear topic shifts	Merge or split the writer's actual ideas
Render spoken numbers/units when unambiguous: "ten thousand markers" -> "10,000 markers" (and log it)	Change tone, register, or formality
FLAG a likely transcription error as a question	Silently substitute the word you think they meant

A filler word that carries meaning is not a filler. "Like" in "a kinship matrix is like a covariance matrix" is a comparison — keep it. "Like, the model broke" is filler — cut it. When unsure, keep and flag.

Flagging transcription errors (never silently fix)

Speech-to-text mangles exactly the terms this domain lives on: homophones, jargon, names, and numbers. You must flag, never fix, because guessing wrong corrupts the writer's meaning under the guise of cleanup.

Flag inline with a bracketed tag the writer can scan for, and log it:

"…the model uses best linear unbiased prediction to estimate breeding values, and the [?] heritability [?] — [transcription? "narrow-sense heritability"? sounded like "narrow sense heritage"] — caps the accuracy."

Inline marker convention: wrap the suspect span and append [?: your best guess, as a question]. Leave the original words in place. The writer resolves every [?] during the first advisory pass.

High-risk flag categories in this domain:

Category	Mangle example	Flag as
Homophone	"allele" -> "a deal", "locus" -> "low cus"	[?: "allele"?]
Jargon term	"GEBV" -> "gee bee", "epistasis" -> "epic stasis"	[?: "GEBV"? "epistasis"?]
Proper noun	"Falconer" -> "falconry", "PLINK" -> "blink"	[?: name — "Falconer"?]
Number/unit	"h-squared of 0.4" -> "age squared of point four"	[?: "h² of 0.4"?]
Dropped negation	"does not respond" -> "does respond"	[?: negation — "does not"?] if audible doubt

If you cannot even guess, flag the span with [?: unclear — verify against audio] and move on. Never delete an unclear span; the writer needs to see where the gap is.

The cleanup log

Every cleaned draft ships with a log so the writer can audit exactly what you touched. No silent changes — that is the whole contract. Append it at the foot of the draft (or as a sibling note). Structure:

## Cleanup log

**Removed (fillers / false starts / repetitions):**
- L3: cut "um, you know" (filler)
- L7: cut false start "the gene— the locus", kept "the locus"
- L12: cut repeated "that that"

**Punctuation / paragraphing restored:**
- L4: sentence boundary after "broke" (period + capital)
- L9: comma at clause boundary ("Once it saturates, accuracy sags")
- Para break inserted before L15 (topic shift: heritability -> prediction)

**Numbers/units rendered (logged):**
- L11: "ten thousand markers" -> "10,000 markers"

**FLAGGED for the writer (NOT changed):**
- L6: [?: "allele"? sounded like "a deal"]
- L8: [?: "GEBV"? — "gee bee vee"]
- L14: [?: negation — "does not respond"? audible hesitation]

**Untouched by design:** word choice, sentence order, paragraph logic, voice.

Worked micro-example

Raw transcript fragment:

um so the thing that surprised me was like the the model got worse when i added more markers which uh shouldnt be possible right because more data is supposed to help but it turns out past a certain point the the markers are just tagging the same a deal over and over

Cleaned draft:

The thing that surprised me was the model got worse when I added more markers, which shouldn't be possible — more data is supposed to help. But it turns out past a certain point the markers are just tagging the same [?: "allele"? sounded like "a deal"] over and over.

Log:

• Cut fillers "um", "so", "like", "uh"; cut repeated "the the" (x2).
• Restored capitalization, periods, the comma after "markers", and the em dash the speaker paused on (within their voice — they pause that way).
• Kept "which shouldn't be possible right" structure; the colloquial "right" is voice, not filler — left it (rendered as a clause, not flagged).
• FLAGGED: [?: "allele"?] — did not substitute.

Notice what did not happen: no tightening, no reordering, no "improving" the run-on. The draft still sounds exactly like the writer talking. That is the deliverable. The next step is the writer resolving the flags and handing the draft to [[advisory-edit]].