中文历史·文学·文化写作 (Chinese History / Literature / Culture Writing)
Write, polish, and cite Chinese articles about Chinese history, literature, and culture. The user supplies the thinking; you supply the structure-faithful expansion, web research, and citations. Output is Chinese (Simplified by default); source material may be in any language. This skill complements astro-sync (publishing); for the 繁简 twin and 配图 steps see Repo conventions.
Golden rules
- Follow the user's thought-flow — must. Their outline, sequencing, analogies, claims, and conclusions are the skeleton. Preserve them; never silently restructure into a generic essay, drop points, or swap in your own thesis.
- Keep their voice. Polish wording and grammar; do not flatten a personal, essayistic voice into a generic prose style.
- Cite, don't assert. Every historical or literary claim is checked against sources (see Phase 2). Anything unverifiable is NOT asserted — it goes to the corrections doc under 待核实 (Phase 5).
- Flag before replacing. If the user's thought contains a factual error, keep their intent, propose the corrected wording, and get explicit approval before swapping it in (AGENTS.md: "Get approval before any change").
- Never cite a source you have not opened and checked (no ghost citations — see Phase 3).
Inputs
source— the user's raw text: an outline, bullet notes, a stream of thought, or a rough draft (pasted or a file path).mode—create(notes → article),polish(improve an existing draft, preserving structure/voice), orcite(add/verify citations; may combine with polish). Ask if unclear.audience/tone— optional; default: general literate audience.
Source quality — trusted vs. untrusted
Trusted: Wikisource (维基文库) primary texts; official academic institutions and museums (kaogu.cn, cssn.cn, 故宫博物院 dpm.org.cn, 中国丝绸博物馆 chinasilkmuseum.com, 国家图书馆, university presses); reference dictionaries (汉典 zdic.net); academic presses & canonical editions (中华书局, 上海古籍, 人民文学, 商务印书馆); referenced Wikipedia entries; peer-reviewed journals / CNKI.
NOT trusted (never evidence): 微博 / WeChat / 头条 / 抖音 / TikTok / 哔哩哔哩 / personal blogs / 百度百科 无参考文献词条 / forum posts / AI outputs.
Workflow
Phase 1 — Understand the thought-flow
- Read the input end to end.
- Restate the user's own structure back to them: sections, key claims, connecting logic; list anything you plan to add, cut, or move.
- Confirm before writing, unless they asked for an immediate draft and the structure is unambiguous.
Phase 2 — Research & source curation
- Search each fact independently; prefer site-restricted queries on trusted domains (e.g.
site:zh.wikisource.org 洛神赋). - Cross-check with ≥2 independent sources. Record disagreements in the corrections doc rather than silently picking a side.
- Prefer primary text over commentary; verify the exact wording and chapter/回目. One verified source suffices for well-established primary-text facts (a poem's wording, a chapter number); reserve ≥2 for contested, interpretive, or attributive claims.
- Verify chapter attributions against the original text, not memory (e.g.《红楼梦》刘姥姥一进荣国府=第六回, 元妃省亲=第十八回;《诗经》titles vs《毛诗正义》).
- 《红楼梦》versions. Two families whose 回目 and 正文 differ: 脂评抄本 (甲戌/己卯/庚辰…, ending at ch80) and 程高本 (程甲/程乙, 120 回; 后四十回 by 程伟元/高鹗).
- 脂批 ceiling: 脂批 exists only for ch1–80; reject any 脂批 claim on a 后四十回 event unless a specific 本 + 回 is named.
- Name the edition when quoting; where readings differ, list the variant (e.g. 第四十一回回目 庚辰本"栊翠庵茶品梅花雪 怡红院劫遇母蝗虫" / 程甲本"贾宝玉品茶栊翠庵"; 盘费 / 盘缠).
Fetching primary texts — practical tips
- Wikisource《红楼梦》uses zero-padded paths:
紅樓夢/第041回(URL-encoded);第四十一回404s. - GBK/mojibake sites: fall back to zh.wikisource.org, 识典古籍, 古文岛, 国学梦.
- 脂本 extent / 回目 lists: publisher catalogue pages (e.g. nlcpress.com for 庚辰本).
Phase 3 — Source verification (verify the truth)
A trusted domain is not proof — the claim must be present in the source's content.
- Open each source and locate the exact passage. If you cannot retrieve it, you may not cite it (→ 待核实).
- Match claim ↔ source one-to-one. If a source doesn't say what the draft claims, drop it or fix the claim.
- Check independence. Two sources that copy one another count as ONE.
- Watch for ghost citations (plausible title but no copy; quote not found; only secondary mentions). AI- or memory-invented citations must be removed.
- High-risk claim types — verify verbatim or drop: (i) character dialogue; (ii) usage statistics about an author/text; (iii) 批语归因 without 本 + 回. Worked examples:
docs/260808-corrections-by-citation.md,docs/260822-corrections-by-citation.md. - After writing, run the Phase 6 sweep over the finished draft — that re-verification lives there (below), not twice.
Phase 4 — Write / polish
- Write in Simplified Chinese by default; follow the user's section order; mark each fact-supported sentence with a citation marker.
- Remove duplication — each fact appears once per entry; cut restatements across bio/analysis/intro/conclusion.
- Glosses (canonical rule). Precise terminology at first use; annotate uncommon characters with pinyin as
字(pinyin), verified against a dictionary. Examples (with the correct reading): 菂(dì)、霁(jì)、诔(lěi)、绡(xiāo)、垄(lǒng)、鲛(jiāo)、縠(hú,一种绉纱)、忡(chōng)、姽婳(guǐ huà)、茜(qiàn)、麝(shè)、铰(jiǎo)、嬤(mó,旧读 mā);classical-verse characters: 杕杜(dì dù)、蝃蝀(dì dōng)、隮(jī)、淇(qí)、滺滺(yōu yōu)、桧(guì)、睆(huàn)、菅(jiān)、澌(sī)、钏(chuàn). Never place a gloss inside a verbatim quote — put it outside the closing quote (e.g.……齐根铰下"("铰"读 jiǎo)). Don't annotate common characters. - Structure. Same heading level within a list-style article; no hierarchy labels (附录/补充); conclusion last; max heading depth
###(deeper → bold run-in labels, no 4.2.3 levels). - Citations. Inline
[¹],[²]… plus a 引用来源 / 参考文献 list (author, title, edition/publisher; Wikisource text+edition; web site+title+access date). For web sources, give a clickable URL (e.g. the Wikisource 回 URL) as well as the access date. Quote verbatim exactly (chapter/回目 included).
Phase 5 — Corrections doc (conditional)
- If every claim verifies, no corrections doc is created.
- Unverifiable / contradictory items go to
docs/YYMMDD-corrections-by-citation.md, structured perdocs/260808-corrections-by-citation.md(校核总表 / 已修正逐条明细 / 待核实清单 / 引用来源清单). - If the article already appears in an older corrections doc, cross-reference it (e.g. "260808 #35") instead of re-litigating; keep the 处置分类 (①已修正 / ②待核实 / ③已核对) consistent.
Phase 6 — Post-write self-review (defect-pattern sweep)
Re-read the finished draft once, hunting the recurring defects below; fix each in place. Also confirm the re-verification step: exact wording matches the cited edition (note variants, don't silently "correct"); attribution (author/title/chapter) is right; every inline marker [ⁿ] maps 1:1 to the 引用来源 list.
- Count your own numbers — a "这 N 个字" claim must match the quote (real defect: "这八个字" used for an 11-character quote).
- Cite the 余论 / 背景 too — no uncited broad assertion (e.g. "戏子在清代是贱籍").
- Allusions need a source (e.g. "千红一哭,万艳同悲" → 第五回"千红一窟""万艳同杯").
- State count/list ambiguity honestly (e.g. the twelve actors — 菂官早亡、蕊官补入).
- Attribution & excerpt boundaries — speaker/source exact (敕谕 vs 叙述语); don't drop an opening clause that shifts the sense.
- Label interpretation (索隐 / 自传 / 家国 / 象征) as the reader's, attributed; assert verifiable textual facts as facts (e.g. 索隐派读《红楼梦》为康熙朝政治小说 — mark it as a reading).
- Pinyin — reading verified (旧读 noted).
- Simplified-only sweep — scan for Traditional/variant characters that slipped in (e.g. 嬤/嬷, 與/与, 歸/归).
- Verbatim-quote fidelity — don't modernize pronouns (他→她) or alter punctuation (,→;) inside quotes.
- Edition / 回数 consistency — keep 八十回 / 一百二十回 / 后四十回 statements consistent and non-contradictory (e.g. avoid "通行的《红楼梦》八十回,后四十回…").
- Citing a popular interpreter — attribute to a named work (e.g. 蒋勋《蒋勋细说红楼梦》); label the author's personal impressions distinctly.
Genre: 物象细读 (object-as-lens close reading)
A recognized article type: take one object from the primary text (a medicine, garment, dish, colour) and read it as a lens on the whole work.
- Fix the object's exact chapter(s) and read the surrounding scene, not just one sentence.
- Trace it outward in rings — 物 → 人物 → 家族 → 时代/国 — each ring anchored to a verifiable textual detail.
- Frame the outermost ring as a reader's interpretation (attributed to a named school/scholar), cite the work's own boundary statements, and pair the object with an echo elsewhere (草蛇灰线).
体例:原文引文块 + 多注(作者偏好的格式)
这是排版体例,与第 2 条的"文风"不同:它只规定引文与注释怎样摆放,语言的声音仍归作者。
Close-reading articles read best when each section leads with the primary text. A format the user likes:
- Quote first, then read. Open each section with a blockquote of the original passage (1–3 per section), then the reading; keep other quotations inline.
- 多注. Gloss colour names, garments and objects at first occurrence in parentheses (e.g.
石青(近乎黑的深蓝)); gloss each term once. - Never gloss inside a verbatim quote — put the gloss outside the closing quote (canonical rule: Phase 4 item 17).
- "注" ≠ length. 多注 vs 少注 is about how many annotations, not how long the piece is: a long essay can be 少注, a short one 多注. Set the density by the target reader, not the word count.
- Rare characters (e.g. 䰖, 羓) — add a common rendering so they don't show as missing-glyph boxes.
色词 / 服饰考释 (colour & garment terms)
- Where to verify 传统色名: 中国丝绸博物馆"乾隆色谱"(reconstructed from the 乾隆 weaving-bureau dye records — 蓝八色、黄五色、红四色、紫五色、绿六色…;
chinasilkmuseum.com); 汉典zdic.net(词义 / 釉色); 故宫博物院dpm.org.cn; referenced 维基百科 colour entries. 不采 知乎 / 百度百科 / 博客. - Gloss vs claim. A reader-help gloss ("蜜合色≈浅黄白") is editorial — no citation needed. A statement about a colour's status or use ("石青是清代官服主色") is a claim — cite it, or mark 待核实.
- Widely-cited ≠ verifiable. 清·李斗《扬州画舫录》"浅黄白色曰蜜合" is quoted everywhere for 蜜合色, but the book is not on 维基文库 — without checking the text itself, mark 待核实. 传统色名 are fuzzy; some (e.g. 靠色) have no reliable definition — don't invent one.
- 《红楼梦》fact-check examples (worked examples, not general rules): 第五十回 reads 仇十洲《双艳图》, not 艳雪图; 黛玉 is not "通篇不写衣饰" (第八回、第四十九回 both have real outfit descriptions) — avoid absolutes. Reading a person's colour as a "code" is a reader's interpretation — label it (item 28).
Repo conventions
See AGENTS.md — filenames docs/<YYMMDD>-<slug>.md, images imgs/<YYMMDD>-<slug>.<ext> referenced as ../imgs/<file>, README kept in sync, no nested .git, corrections doc only when there is something to record.
Publishing side-steps (separate skills): 繁体孪生(zh-hans → zh-hant)见 simplified-to-traditional; 配图 / 信息图 见 custom-infographic.
Verification checklist
- Thought-flow preserved — same order, points, conclusions.
- Claims sourced (≥2 independent where contested; primary text preferred); chapter attributions verified; 《红楼梦》edition named and 脂批 within ch1–80.
- Sources opened and located; independent; no ghost citations; high-risk quotes found verbatim.
- No fact stated twice within an entry; conclusion not restating the intro.
- Citation markers map 1:1 to 引用来源 entries.
- Interpretation labelled; textual facts asserted as facts.
- No untrusted-source claim used as evidence; unverifiable items in the corrections doc.
- Pinyin verified (旧读 noted); Simplified-only sweep done; quotes unaltered; every gloss sits outside the quote it explains.
- 回数/版本 consistent; popular-interpreter views attributed, personal impressions labelled.
- Close-reading 体例: each section opens with a blockquote of the original; colour/garment terms glossed at first use.
- Filename
YYMMDD-slug; images../imgs/; README in sync; stated word count matches actual CJK count (python3 -c "import re;print(len(re.findall(r'[\u4e00-\u9fff]',open('FILE').read())))"). - Nothing committed unless the user explicitly asks.
Error handling
- Draft conflicts with sources → show the discrepancy and both sides; propose the fix; wait for approval.
- Sources conflict, neither clearly right → record both under 待核实; present the conflict with evidence.
- Source paywalled/unavailable → use the other independent source; note the gap.
- Ambiguous structure → ask; don't guess the outline.
- No reliable source → 待核实; don't assert; tell the user.
- Too long for target format → ask which sections to trim; don't silently cut (see
astro-synclength conventions).
