reply-in-their-tone

Reply In Their Tone Skill

Replies fail on register more than content: the three-line casual ask answered with four formal paragraphs, the careful formal request answered with "hey! sure thing 🙌". People read tone mismatch as social information — too formal reads as cold or annoyed, too casual reads as unserious. This skill reads the incoming message's register first (formality, length, directness, warmth markers), then drafts the reply in that register — content correct, tone native.

What This Skill Produces

• The tone read — the sender's register across four dials: formality, length, directness, warmth/emoji
• The reply — content as instructed, register as read
• The knobs — one-notch-warmer and one-notch-more-formal variants when the call is close
• The mismatch flag — when the right move is deliberately not matching (escalations, boundary-setting), said explicitly

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The incoming email — verbatim; the tone read works on the actual words
• What the reply must accomplish — the yes/no/ask/push-back content, decided by the user
• The relationship — first contact, colleague, boss, customer? Matching runs within the floor the relationship sets (never below professional-warm with strangers)

Framework: The Four Dials

1. Formality: greeting style ("Dear Dr." vs "hey"), sign-off, contractions, titles. Match it — one notch warmer is safe when unsure; one notch stiffer never is.
2. Length: a three-line email wants a three-to-five-line reply. Answering short with long reads as lecture; long with short reads as brush-off. Match the sender's investment, ±50%.
3. Directness: some write asks in line one; others cushion. Direct senders get the answer in sentence one; cushioners get one line of cushion first — not three.
4. Warmth markers: exclamation points, emoji, small talk. Reflect at most their level, never above; zero-emoji senders get zero emoji, always.
5. The deliberate mismatch: boundary-setting, escalation, and bad-news replies sometimes should run more formal than the incoming — a register shift is itself a message. When content calls for it, the skill says so and shifts on purpose rather than by accident.

Output Format

Reply: [to whom, accomplishing what]

The Tone Read

Formality: [level, evidence] · Length: [theirs] · Directness: [direct/cushioned] · Warmth: [markers present]

The Draft

[The reply, register-matched, ready to send]

Knobs

[One notch warmer: the changed lines · one notch more formal: the changed lines]

[If mismatch was chosen: why, stated]

Quality Checks

• [ ] Every dial cites evidence from the incoming message
• [ ] Reply length is within ±50% of the incoming
• [ ] Warmth markers never exceed the sender's
• [ ] The content the user specified survives intact — tone-matching never softens the actual answer
• [ ] Deliberate mismatches are flagged as choices, not accidents

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not default to formal — stiffness reads as coldness, and coldness reads as a message
• [ ] Do not out-emoji the sender — one notch above reads as performative
• [ ] Do not cushion a direct sender's answer — they told you their preference in their own email
• [ ] Do not let tone-matching dilute a "no" — register is the wrapper, never the content
• [ ] Do not mimic idiosyncrasies (their typos, their catchphrases) — matching register isn't impersonation