Rewrite your copy
This page shows you how to set up a rewrite, run it, and improve it in further passes.
Set the recipe
Select the recipe button beside Rewrite. It shows your current settings, such as rewrite · practitioner · keep · claude-sonnet-5.5. In the Rewrite recipe you choose:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Model | The AI model that writes the rewrite. See Choose a model. |
| Mode | How much the model may change. See below. |
| Voice | Who the rewrite should sound like. |
| Length | Keep stays close to your length, no more than about a tenth longer. Tighten (20-40% shorter) cuts filler but never a number, name, date, price, link or quote. |
Select Done to close the recipe. Your choices are kept for the next rewrite.
Choose a mode
| Mode | What it does | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Polish | Changes only the tells. Your wording, sentences and paragraph breaks stay as they are. | Your draft is close and you want the giveaways gone. |
| Rewrite | Rebuilds every sentence in the voice you chose. Keeps the order of your points and every fact. Leaves passages that are already sharp alone. | Your draft says the right things but reads as generated. |
| Recompose | Rebuilds the piece from its meaning, as a post. It avoids reusing runs of your wording, and may change the order and structure. | You want a new post from the same material. |
Choose a voice
| Voice | Sounds like |
|---|---|
| Practitioner | An experienced practitioner: confident, specific, a little dry wit. |
| Warm | A plain-spoken colleague talking over coffee. |
| Direct | Blunt but human, with short, punchy sentences. |
| Mass audience | A columnist writing for everyone: everyday words, numbers up front, a little drama. |
Mass audience changes its shape with the piece. A long read stays a long read, with its headings, order and length; only the words get simpler. A post, or any Recompose, gets a hook up front, one-sentence paragraphs and a question to close on. PlainSpeak decides which from what kind of piece you pasted, shown on the Looks like button in the scan panel. You can correct it there.
You can edit these voices and add your own. See Edit and add voices.
Build a post with Recompose
In Recompose, the recipe shows Recompose details:
- Template: the shape of the post, such as The Misconception or Listicle. Choose (none) to let the model decide.
- Topic: what the post is about, for templates that ask for one.
- Sections: the parts of the post, in order. Each has a label, an instruction and a shape: a quote, a list or a line. Select Add section or Remove to change them. A template holds one to ten sections.
- Hook: how the post opens: Auto, Question, Stat, Bold claim, Story or Contrarian.
- Call to action: how it ends: Engaging question, No call to action, or Custom last sentence, which asks for the Closing line to end on.
Select Save current as template to keep what you set up. See Use templates for posts.
When your source is a long-form article or a newsletter, a banner may suggest the template that usually suits it. Select Apply to use it or Dismiss to hide the suggestion.
Run the rewrite
- Select Rewrite, or press
Ctrl+Enter. - Watch the rewrite arrive in the Your rewrite panel. To stop it, select Cancel.
Each finished rewrite is saved as a version: v1, v2 and so on, up to the last 12. Select a version to view it; later versions are kept.
Rewrite again
After the first rewrite, the button reads Rewrite again. It rewrites the version you are looking at, not your original, so you can build on a good version. Change your source text and the next rewrite starts from the source again. Restart discards all versions and keeps your original.
Long pieces
A piece over 750 words is rewritten in parts of up to 750 words, split between paragraphs. The status line shows which part is running. The parts appear together when the last one finishes. If one part fails, it keeps its original wording and a note tells you which. Cancelling keeps the parts already rewritten and leaves the rest as it was, and is not saved as a version.
Fix what is left
A fix pass changes only the phrases it is told about and leaves the rest of the copy alone. It is not a mode: it always works on the current copy.
- From the scan: on the Current copy tab, when some tells are over tolerance, select Fix these.
- From the audit: select Fix in the Audit panel to fix the phrases the audit models quoted. See Get a second opinion.
The compare bar then shows how much of the wording the fix touched.
When PlainSpeak keeps your original
PlainSpeak checks every rewrite before showing it. If the rewrite fails a check, you see The rewrite didn't land. and your text stays exactly as it was. No version is saved. It keeps your text when:
- the model returned nothing;
- a fix pass came back unchanged;
- the rewrite lost too much: under 60% of your words came back, or under 40% with Tighten;
- the rewrite added tells: more than one extra, or more than a tenth of what your draft had, whichever is larger;
- the connection to the model dropped partway.
Select Try again to run it again, or Learn more for what to do about that reason. See Troubleshooting.
What PlainSpeak tidies for you
- Em dashes are taken out of every rewrite, even when the model writes them: two clauses get a comma, and a dash at the start or end of a line is dropped. Quotations, code and links are left exactly as written.
- Double spaces between words are closed up.