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Early preview Nothing here is released yet. Pages marked Garden are drafts that no person has reviewed. How review works

Build a style guide so AI drafts sound like you

Garden · not yet reviewed Time: 30 minutes, then a week of light use Good for: communications staff, programme manager, founder, consultant, anyone who writes updates or newsletters

You'll end up with: A one-page style guide, built from your own writing, that you paste into an AI tool before it drafts for you, so you spend less time rewriting its drafts into your voice.

Tools: Any AI chat assistant (free tier is fine). A project or custom-instructions feature helps but is not needed. Use only writing you are allowed to share with that tool, or the invented samples below.

Why this matters

If you rewrite most AI drafts to sound like yourself, you lose the time the AI saved. Typing “make it sound like me” doesn’t work, because the AI has no idea what “me” means. A short guide written from your real writing gives it something concrete to follow, and you can see whether it helped by comparing drafts made with and without it.

Smallest useful build

One page in plain text with five parts: how your writing sounds, how you structure a piece, sentence habits, things you never want to see, and two short examples. Any AI chat can help you build it in about 30 minutes.

Sample inputs

Three invented samples from a made-up community garden coordinator. Use them, or swap in three short pieces you wrote yourself, with names and private details removed.

Sample 1 (email to volunteers):
Quick one: the water tap by bed 6 is fixed. Thanks to Sam for chasing the council. If you see it drip again, text me, don't email, I won't see it till Monday.


Sample 2 (newsletter opener):
We planted 40 leeks on Saturday and lost 12 to slugs by Tuesday. So: beer traps are back. Bring your empty jars.


Sample 3 (note to a funder):
We spent £410 of the £500 grant. The rest goes on a second water butt in March. Receipts attached. Happy to walk you round any Saturday morning.

Steps

  1. Write your own baseline first. Before you ask the AI anything, write two or three words that describe how you want to sound, and one thing you hate seeing in AI writing. Then ask the AI, with no samples, to draft a short message: “Write a 60-word note to volunteers saying the shed key has moved to the blue box by the gate.” Save that draft as “before”.

  2. Let the AI interview you.

    I want to write a one-page style guide so you can draft in my voice. Here are three samples of my writing: [paste samples]. Before you write anything, ask me up to eight questions, one at a time, about my tone, how I structure things, my sentence habits and what I dislike in AI writing. After each answer, show me one sample sentence in the style you now think I want, so I can tell you what's off.

    Answer honestly, and push back on any sample sentence that doesn’t sound like you.

  3. Turn the answers into a guide.

    Now write the style guide as one page of plain text with these headings: Voice, Structure, Sentence habits, Never do this, Two short examples. Use only what I said and what is in my samples. Where you are guessing, mark the line with [guess] so I can check it.

    Read every line. Delete or fix each [guess] and anything that isn’t true of your writing.

  4. Test it against the baseline. Start a fresh chat, paste the guide, and ask for the same shed-key note as step 1. Put the two drafts side by side and count the edits each needs before you would send it.

Check it

  • Every rule in the guide comes from your answers or your samples, and no [guess] lines are left.
  • The “after” draft needs fewer edits than the “before” draft. Write both numbers down.
  • The “after” draft avoids the thing you said you hate in step 1.
  • The guide fits on one page. If it is longer, you are describing a writer, not giving a tool instructions.

Break it

Ask for something your samples don’t cover, such as a formal complaint to the council about a broken fence. Does the AI keep your plainness while changing the register, or does it copy the chatty email tone where it doesn’t fit? Add one line to the guide about how your voice changes for formal letters, and test again.

Reflect

  • Which rule made the biggest difference to the draft, and which made none?
  • Did the interview tell you anything about your own writing that you hadn’t noticed?
  • What would you still never let the AI send without reading it first?

Next iteration

Use the guide for a week on real drafts. Each time you fix the same kind of problem twice, add a line to “Never do this”. At the end of the week, save the guide in your tool’s project or custom-instructions space so it loads every time. Once that works, the same approach fits other repeated writing, such as funder reports or meeting summaries.

Connections

Skills it uses

Concepts it practises

Competencies

Background reading

How we know

The claim
A style guide written from your own samples, by letting the AI interview you and then revising it after a week of real use, makes AI drafts closer to your voice.
The evidence
Katie Parrott, a staff writer at Every, describes the steps from her own practice. She says a starter guide takes about 20 minutes and that her working guides took months to mature. It is a practitioner's account, not a measured study.
The limits
Nobody has measured how much rewriting time a guide saves. The learner steps, sample texts and checks below are this card's own and were not shown in the source. Results depend on the tool and on how much of your writing you share.

Plain Markdown for agents: /projects/prj-ai-style-guide-from-your-samples.md