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Writing Beats

Matt PocockCommunityCreated by Matt Pocock

  • Skill
  • Content generator
  • Documents and content
  • MIT
  • No issues found
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From the author

Writing, exploit; assemble raw material into a journey of beats, grounding each term before a beat leans on it.
— the description by Matt Pocock

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

Writing-beats transforms a collection of raw notes into a polished article by treating the writing process as a journey. Instead of drafting linearly, the agent guides the user through a series of 'beats'—discrete narrative moves. The process begins by defining prerequisite knowledge to ensure reader comprehension, then proceeds by offering the user multiple narrative paths. Each beat is carefully selected from the raw material, ensuring that every new concept is properly grounded before it is introduced. This iterative, interactive approach allows the user to maintain control over the article's direction while the agent manages the structural integrity and logical flow.

What it does

  • Establishes prerequisite knowledge to define the audience's starting point.
  • Presents multiple candidate beats for the next step in the narrative journey.
  • Tracks grounded concepts to ensure logical progression and prevent reader confusion.
  • Writes one beat at a time to the article file based on user selection.
  • Allows for iterative editing and path correction throughout the writing process.
  • Identifies when the narrative reaches a natural conclusion, regardless of remaining raw material.

When to use it

  • When you have a large pile of raw notes and need to organize them into a coherent story.
  • When you want to explore different narrative angles before committing to a final structure.
  • When you need to ensure complex concepts are introduced and grounded logically.
  • When you prefer an interactive, collaborative writing process over generating a full draft at once.

Advantages

  • Prevents narrative bloat by focusing on one beat at a time.
  • Ensures logical consistency by strictly managing concept grounding.
  • Provides flexibility to pivot the story direction based on user preference.
  • Reduces the pressure of drafting by breaking the task into manageable, discrete moves.

Usage examples

“I have a markdown file of research notes on quantum computing. Help me turn this into an introductory article.”
The agent will ask you to define what the audience already knows, then propose 2-3 starting beats based on your notes, waiting for your selection before writing the first section.
“I don't like the current direction. Can we go back and try the other option you suggested for the second beat?”
The agent will revert the article to the state before the second beat, allow you to select the alternative path, and update the article file accordingly.

Install

  1. Download the skill as a ZIP:

    https://autogineer.com/agent-skills/mattpocock/writing-beats/download

  2. Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

    mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip writing-beats.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by Matt Pocock

<what-to-do>

The user has passed (or will pass) a markdown file of raw material. This is exploit: the exploring is done, the pile is fixed. Commit to a path through it and mine the pile to fill each beat.

If the user did not say where to save the article, ask once and remember the path.

Then run a beat-by-beat journey, choose-your-own-adventure style:

  1. Establish the prerequisites. Before any beats, settle with the user what the audience already knows walking in: the concepts that are grounded from the start. Everything else must be grounded by a beat before a later beat can use it. See Grounding.

  2. Write 2–3 candidate starting beats, drawn from the raw material. Each is a different entry point into the article. Each may only lean on grounded concepts; note what new concepts each one grounds. Show the user the beats before writing to the article file. The user picks one. Preview what beats that pick unlocks, as if the user is seeing a little way down the path.

  3. Once the user picks a starting beat, write only that beat to the article file. A beat may be one sentence or several paragraphs, whatever that beat naturally is. Stop there.

  4. Re-read the article file from disk. Then offer 2–3 candidate next beats: different directions the journey could pivot to from where the article now stands. Each must be reachable from the current grounded set; note what each one grounds.

  5. Loop steps 3–5 until the article reaches a natural end.

</what-to-do>

<supporting-info>

Grounding

Every concept has to be grounded before a beat can lean on it: the audience either walked in knowing it or met it in an earlier beat. A beat that reaches for an ungrounded concept loses the reader; that is the one move the journey can't make. The unit is the concept, not the word for it: a beat can lean on an idea the reader lacks even with no jargon in sight. Where a concept has a name (a term), grounding it means landing the idea and the term together.

A concept gets grounded one of two ways:

  • Prerequisite: grounded before the first beat. The audience brings it. Fixed at the start.

  • Introduced: a beat establishes it, and from then on it's grounded for every later beat.

So each beat does two jobs: it requires concepts that are already grounded, and it grounds new ones. Keep a running list of what's grounded so far, and update it each time a beat lands.

This is what shapes the choose-your-own-adventure. A candidate beat is only reachable if everything it requires is already grounded; picking a beat that grounds concept X unlocks every beat that was waiting on X. When you offer next beats, they must all be reachable from the current grounded set, and say what each one grounds, so the user can see which paths it opens.

The big lever is what you make a prerequisite versus what you ground inside the piece. Demand too much up front and you shut out readers who don't have it; ground too much inside and the early beats drown in definitions. Settle this with the user when you establish prerequisites, and revisit it whenever a tempting beat turns out to require a concept nothing has grounded yet: the fix is either a grounding beat before it, or promoting the concept to a prerequisite.

What is a beat

A beat is one move in the journey. It does one thing: sets a scene, lands a point, asks a question, drops an aside, twists the angle. Then it stops, leaving the reader at a place where the next beat can pivot.

A beat is sized by what it needs:

  • A single sentence if that's all the move is ("And then nothing happened for three weeks.").

  • A short paragraph if the move needs setup.

  • Multiple paragraphs if the beat is a self-contained vignette, argument, or example.

If a "beat" needs five paragraphs and three subheadings, it's not a beat; it's two beats glued together. Split it.

Pulling from the pile

Pull material from the raw pile to populate each beat. You can paraphrase, split, recombine, or quote. The pile is a quarry.

Ending the journey

The article ends when the journey is complete, not when the pile is empty. Most piles will have leftover fragments that don't make it in. That is fine; that is the point of having more raw material than you need.

Writing rhythm

  • Append one beat at a time. Never write ahead.

  • Re-read the article file from disk before every write. Preserve user edits absolutely.

  • If the user edits a previous beat substantially, let it change what comes next.

  • If the user says "rewrite that beat" or "go back and try a different beat 3", do it: edit in place, leave the rest alone.

</supporting-info>

Files

LICENSE

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 Matt Pocock

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

Requirements and compatibility

Written for: Claude Code

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Needs: Claude Code frontmatter

Security

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Attribution and licence

Created by
Matt Pocock
Publisher
Matt Pocock (Community)
Source
mattpocock/skills · skills/in-progress/writing-beats · commit 4ae2317
Licence
MIT License (redistribution allowed)
  • LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
  • ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
Synced

AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by Matt Pocock or Matt Pocock.

Download ZIP

The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download writing-beats.zip