Anthropic / doc-coauthoring
Why does long document work need its own skill?
Because one prompt and one long answer is the worst way to write anything that matters.
What to remember
- It front loads the disagreement into the outline, which is the cheapest place to have it.
- Section by section drafting keeps every part reviewable at human speed.
- It pairs naturally with docx when the deliverable has to be a Word file.
- It structures the work. It does not know your subject matter for you.
01What it changes in practice
The usual failure with long documents is that a model produces twenty pages in one pass. It reads fluently, so nobody reviews it properly, and the errors surface later in front of a customer or a regulator.
Working in stages changes the economics. Fixing an outline takes minutes, fixing a section takes an hour, and fixing a finished document that everyone already approved takes a week.
02Where it disappoints
It is overhead on short work. For a paragraph of marketing copy the ceremony is pure cost, and a direct request is better.
It also cannot supply judgement you do not have. If nobody on your side knows what the document should claim, a better process only produces a well structured guess.
Install and first run
- Install the skill from anthropics/skills, published under Apache 2.0.
- Start with the outline and argue about it before any prose is written.
- Draft one section at a time and review it before moving on, so mistakes stay local.
Questions people actually ask
- How is this different from just asking for a document?
- It splits the work into outline, drafting and revision with review points, instead of producing one long draft nobody checks.
- Does it produce Word files?
- Not by itself. Pair it with the docx skill when the final artifact has to be a .docx file.
- What license is it under?
- Apache 2.0, unlike the docx, xlsx, pptx and pdf skills, which are source available.
Sources
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