Calibrate the scan to your writing

This page covers the Your writing tab in Settings. It has two parts: your writing baseline, which tunes the scan to you, and the Repurpose lens, which gives Recompose a style to aim for.

Your writing baseline

Without a baseline, PlainSpeak compares a rewrite with the draft you pasted. When that draft came from an AI model, the comparison protects the model's habits, not yours. A baseline fixes that: PlainSpeak measures pieces you wrote yourself and compares drafts with those.

Before you start

• Five or more pieces you wrote before you used AI tools, at least 4,000 words in all. More is better.
• Plain text (.txt) or Markdown (.md) files, one piece per file.
• The same kind you mostly write now: long posts or short ones. A baseline of long-form articles is only compared with long-form pieces.

Build it

1. Open Settings, then Your writing.
2. Under Your writing baseline, select Choose files and pick your files.
3. Read the summary: how many pieces and words, what kind they are, and how many passages the style ranges came from.
4. Select Save.

If some pieces sit apart from the rest, the summary names them. A co-writer, a tool or a different period can cause that. They are still included; remove those files and build again if you want them out.

What changes in the scan

• Two distance lines: how far a draft sits from your writing, as a rank against your own pieces, such as "further from your writing than 14 of your 18 posts". It is a distance, not a verdict: about one in ten of your own pieces sits in the furthest tenth too.
• Style measures judged against your range: hedging, intensifiers, passive voice, rules of three, abstract nouns, long sentences and serial commas are flagged only when a draft goes above your own usual range.
• The voice number judged against you: after a rewrite, a measure that moved but stayed within your usual range does not count as drift.

The scan needs at least 300 words to place a draft against your writing, and 150 for the style line. A draft of a different kind from your baseline is not compared.

To remove the baseline, select Clear baseline, then Save. If the summary says Choose your files again, your baseline was built before a newer check existed: choose the same files again to add it.

Repurpose lens

A Recompose has no source style to keep, so the lens gives it one to aim for.

1. Under Repurpose lens, paste a post you rate.
2. On the next line, type three dashes: ---
3. Paste the next post. Three or four is plenty, each at least 15 words.
4. Select Save.

The summary under the box shows the target PlainSpeak measured, such as the average sentence length. Only the measurements reach the model, as instructions; the posts themselves are not sent. The lens is used in Recompose only.