Writing Harness Lite
A writing helper that learns your voice from your own writing and edits, and gets better the more you use it.
1. The problem
AI writing sounds like AI: too polished, too even, generic words. Today's fixes are either "humanizer" skills that strip obvious AI words, or voice profiles written once and never updated. Neither learns from you over time, and neither knows what works for a particular kind of message.
2. What it does differently
Learns from your edits
The gap between its draft and what you actually sent is the best lesson. It saves those changes and turns repeated ones into rules you approve.
Knows what works
It keeps patterns from messages that got results (a reply, a yes), so a cold email borrows from cold emails that worked.
Uses your real writing
It shows the AI real examples of your writing for that kind of task. That works better than describing your style in the abstract.
Everything is visible
Your voice is stored as readable notes and examples, not a black box. You can see each rule, edit it, or undo it.
3. The architecture, in plain terms
Think of it as four layers. Only the top two are new; the bottom two already exist.
Why not a whole new harness? A harness is the engine that runs an AI agent, and Pi and Hermes already are one. Building another means rebuilding a solved part. What's new here is the knowledge about your writing and a reliable process for learning it, so that's what we build. The engine stays swappable.
Why more than a skill? A skill is advice the AI may or may not follow. The workflow is real code, so saving, learning and undoing happen every time.
4. How it works when you use it
- You ask. In any chat with your agent: "Draft a reply to Sam declining the meeting." No settings and no genre to pick.
- It figures out the type (a decline email) and the audience (a colleague).
- It gathers context: 3–5 of your real messages like this one, your approved voice rules, and patterns from similar messages that worked.
- It drafts in your voice, fitting the structure to this task rather than one template for everything.
- It checks that the draft says what you meant and nothing extra, and flags obvious AI habits.
- You edit and send. It quietly saves its draft next to your final version.
- It learns. When the same kind of edit keeps coming up ("Logani never opens with 'I hope this finds you well'"), it suggests a new rule. You approve it or not.
5. What's in your workspace
| Folder | What it holds | Who adds to it |
|---|---|---|
| My writing | Things you actually wrote: emails, posts, docs | You (upload), or your sent final versions |
| Writing I admire | Other people's work you want to borrow from, kept separate from "your" voice | You |
| Voice rules | Short, readable rules, each backed by real examples | Suggested by the tool, approved by you |
| Corrections | Pairs of its draft and your final version | Saved automatically |
| What works | Structures from messages that got the result you wanted | From outcomes you mark (got a reply, got a yes) |
It's all plain files with full history, so any change can be undone.
6. How it improves over time
| When | What it can do |
|---|---|
| Day 1 | Drafts from your uploaded samples. Already more "you" than plain AI. |
| Weeks | Has learned your common corrections, e.g. how you open, sign off, and how blunt you are with whom. |
| Months | Knows which structures get replies for your kinds of messages, and your voice in each setting. |
| Later (optional) | If there's enough data and it beats the simple approach, train a small custom model. Not before. |
7. Safeguards
8. How we'd prove it works before building more
A blind test on real writing tasks you haven't used for training. The same AI writes three ways:
| Version | What it gets |
|---|---|
| A | A plain prompt |
| B | The prompt plus your real examples |
| C | Examples plus your learned rules and corrections |
You score each one, without knowing which is which, on sounds like me, says what I meant, and ready to send.
Decision: if C clearly beats B, the learning part is worth it and we keep going. If not, we keep the simpler
example-based version and stop. Either way, we know.
9. What we're building vs. not
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Writing workflow + workspace on Pi / Hermes | v1 |
| Learning from your edits, with approve/undo | v1 |
| Tracking outcomes ("what works") | v1, simple |
| Callable from other apps (MCP) | when a second app needs it |
| Training a custom model | only if it beats v1 |
| A brand-new agent harness | no |
| "Undetectable by AI detectors" promises | no |
10. What we need from you
- About 20–30 pieces of your own writing, mixed types are fine.
- About 10 real upcoming writing tasks for the blind test.
- Your call: is the cloud AI OK for drafting, or must it be fully local?
- A "go" to build. Nothing gets built until you say so.