Voice: manifesto (and site prose) reads AI-y — restore Rufus's voice

[rufuspollock]

Part of the v0.1 epic (#46). Feedback from Rufus 2026-07-18:

the markdown manifesto has now got very ai-y when my original draft whilst needing some polish was pretty good and had more human feel. at a time when more and more stuff sounds like AI try and preserve or replicate my voice as much as possible.

To do (later — parked while planning work happens)

• Revise manifesto.md: go back to the original draft (docs/manifesto/draft-2026-01.md) as the base; keep its phrasings, jokes, asides ("Wait, i hear you ask", the punk-teenager metaphor, X ❤️ markdown) and only lightly polish — rather than the current distilled rewrite.
• Voice-check the other from-scratch prose: index.md, why.md (listed in review log [log] Review log — things Claude did that may want a later check #57).
• Optionally: write a short docs/voice.md style note (what Rufus's voice sounds like, tells of AI register to avoid) so all future article drafting starts right. Reference texts: manifesto draft, markdown-database.md, rufuspollock.com blog.

Principle for all future content: start from Rufus's drafts/voice and edit lightly; don't rewrite into polished-AI register.

[rufuspollock]

Another example: why page https://wayofmarkdown.com/why

we've ended up with the BS AI-style stuff like: "Here's a secret: nobody actually cares about markdown."

This faux provocation is both off for tone and in structure (classic we don't want X we want Y AI style which we want to avoid). We do care about markdown and we care because ... of what is enables (not because we care about the format per se - duh! of course).

So be positive and again try to go back to my actual tone or style ...

[rufuspollock]

Voice infrastructure built + manifesto revised (commit pushed):

• Installed write-like-me skill from rufuspollock/soundlikeme into .claude/skills/ with a wayofmarkdown voice profile (here) — base profile from the repo (built on the rufuspollock.com essays) plus a 'site mode' register extracted from the manifesto draft, markdown-database essay, and dictated notes.
• scripts/voice-lint.py: mechanical layer — banned words, AI anti-patterns (negation flips, false buildups, unearned profundity), dash-density check, voice-lint-ok inline suppression. Run on all 53 pages; it caught and I fixed AI-isms in my recent pages and in the 2023-era tutorials ('delve', 'utilise', 'empower', 'It's important to note').
• manifesto.md rebuilt from the original draft — Rufus's lines, structure, epigraph and register preserved ('Wait, i hear you ask', punk teenager, 'Move over Notion', haters section); placeholders filled minimally; typos fixed (incl. Aaron Swartz spelling); appendix list-sections now link to the live /markdown-based and /everywhere pages.

Remaining: residual dash-density cleanup in ~8 earlier spoke pages (logged); Rufus verdict on whether the new manifesto + the two new full guides (Notion escape, knowledge bases) sound right — that's the calibration signal for everything after.