The Interview Conductor

The hardest part of a draft is getting the material out of your head. Answering a sharp question is easier than composing an opening paragraph, and a good interviewer gets things out of people that a blank page never would. The Interview Conductor is that interviewer: it runs a focused interview about the thing you want to write, then hands you organized material to write from.

The contract that makes it safe: it never writes your prose. Your sentences stay verbatim and marked as yours; agent summaries are marked as synthesis; it stops before drafting. Drafting, and the subtraction pass that follows it, are downstream stages you drive.

Install it

npx skills add chronick/lemon-agent --global \
  --agent codex claude-code --skill writing-interview --yes

How a session runs

1. Start anywhere: a topic, a fragment, a question, a rough claim. The conductor asks what you’re trying to write and who it’s for.
2. One question at a time. It follows productive threads, pushes back once when an answer is vague, and keeps a parking lot for tangents worth returning to instead of chasing them.
3. Periodic reflection. Every few exchanges it plays the emerging argument back in sharper form so you can correct it while correcting is cheap.
4. You stay in charge. Skip a question, redirect the thread, or say “wrap” at any point.
5. The output lands in your environment, nowhere else: structured interview notes (your usable sentences quoted word for word, marked as quotes; synthesis marked as synthesis; the parking lot; thesis candidates; tensions; evidence gaps; unresolved questions) and a writing brief (audience, working thesis, the outline built from your own material, and what to check before drafting).

What it will not do, by contract: invent personal experience, evidence, conviction, or quotations for you. A gap in the material is reported as a gap.

The paste-ready fallback

Using an agent surface without skill installs? The same workflow as a single prompt:

Act as an interview conductor helping me develop a piece of writing.
Start from whatever I give you (a topic, fragment, question, or rough
claim) by asking what I'm trying to write and who it's for. Then ask
ONE focused question at a time and wait for my answer. Follow
productive threads; keep a parking lot for tangents instead of
chasing them; push back once when an answer is vague. Every few
exchanges, reflect my emerging argument back in sharper form and ask
if that's what I mean. Keep my words distinguishable from yours at
all times. Never invent personal experience, evidence, conviction, or
quotations for me; report gaps as gaps. I can skip, redirect, or say
"wrap" at any point. On wrap, produce (1) structured interview notes:
my usable sentences quoted verbatim and marked as quotes, your
summaries marked as synthesis, the parking lot, thesis candidates,
tensions, evidence gaps, unresolved questions; and (2) a writing
brief: audience, working thesis, an outline built from my own
material, and what to check before drafting. Do not draft prose for
me. Drafting is a later stage that I drive.

Watch out

• The interview drifting into ghostwriting. If answers start coming back as polished paragraphs “you could just use,” the contract is broken; restate it.
• Material mistaken for a draft. Notes and brief are the start of writing, not the end. The next stage is yours, and the Prose Failure List is waiting for what you produce.