— Skill

Claude Doc Co-Authoring

PRDs and decision docs fail when the writer’s context never makes it onto the page — this skill forces context dump → section craft → cold-reader test before you share.

What changes

Walks you through three stages — Context Gathering, Refinement & Structure, Reader Testing — so the doc works for someone (or another Claude) who was not in the room.

When

Use Anthropic’s doc-coauthoring skill when you are writing a substantial structured doc — PRD, design doc, decision doc, RFC, proposal — and the pain is missing context and blind spots, not missing adjectives.

Good fits:

• Decision docs where alternatives and trade-offs must be explicit.
• Specs that will be pasted into another Claude / agent later.
• Proposals that fail review because “you had to be there.”

Skip it for short Slack updates (claude-internal-comms), slide decks (claude-pptx), or pure code/architecture grilling (matt-grill-me).

How to start

Enable doc-coauthoring from anthropics/skills (example-skills). Accept the three-stage workflow; dump context first; build section-by-section; finish with a fresh-context reader test.

Attach the doc-coauthoring skill. Run the three-stage workflow (do not freeform-draft).
Doc type: [PRD | design doc | decision doc | RFC | proposal].
Audience: [who]. Desired impact: [what should change after they read it].
Template: [none | attach / link].
Start Stage 1 only: ask meta questions, then let me info-dump. No outline yet.
After context is enough: Stage 2 section-by-section. Finish with Stage 3 cold reader testing.
Forbidden: invented metrics, fake stakeholder quotes, skipping Reader Testing.