speech coach

Most professional talks fail because they are essentially memos read aloud. Listeners cannot hit "rewind" or "reread," so the moment a sentence becomes too dense, you lose the room. This skill transforms technical content, pitches, and keynotes into spoken-word pieces designed for the ear, not the page.

What it does

• Drafts from scratch by starting with the closing line to ensure every word builds toward a single, memorable conclusion.
• Rewrites for delivery using short paragraphs, conversational rhythms, and contractions that feel natural when spoken.
• Identifies the "Main Thought" to ensure your core argument is stated early and repeated strategically.
• Prunes digressions by enforcing a "one story per talk" rule to keep the audience focused.
• Critiques existing drafts against 12 proven rules, flagging throat-clearing openings, nested clauses, and jargon.
• Coaches performance with checklists for volume, pace, and Q&A handling based on audience size.

How it works

1. Define the bookends. You provide the topic and audience, and the skill forces you to define the closing line and main argument first.
2. Draft the arc. The skill builds the structure: Opener to Main Thought to Story to Restatement to Closing.
3. Audit and cut. The draft is audited for listener confusion points and cut by roughly one third to account for live performance time.
4. Delivery Prep. The skill generates a specific 5-bullet delivery checklist and identifies which lines will land the hardest.

Frameworks & tools

This skill is based on Glenn Kramon's "Winning Writing" rules from Stanford GSB. It utilizes rhetorical structures like the Sparkline, the three Vs of delivery, and Q&A frameworks including Problem/Solution/Result and What/So What/Now What.

Why this beats prompting it yourself

Standard LLMs tend to write flowery, formal prose that sounds "AI-generated" and stilted when read aloud. This skill explicitly breaks grammar rules—like using sentence fragments and dropped subjects—to produce a script that actually sounds like a human talking.

Use cases

• Demo-day pitches where you need to hook investors in under three minutes.
• Technical keynotes that need to translate complex architecture into a compelling narrative.
• Internal all-hands updates that need to sound authentic rather than corporate.
• Wedding toasts or eulogies that require a balance of humor, story, and a strong closing beat.

Known limitations

Does not design visual assets or slide decks. Target lengths are capped at 20 minutes; it is not intended for multi-hour lectures or workshops. Requires manual timing by the user for final accuracy.