Skip to content
Litenova Solutions Engineering Standards

Writing Style for Generated Content

Applies to all documentation, code comments, commit messages, PR descriptions, and agent context files produced by humans or AI agents.

Tone and Voice

  • Active voice. Short sentences.
  • Formal and neutral. No colloquialisms, idioms, or analogies.
  • Do not anthropomorphize code. Code does not “know”, “think”, “decide”, or “want”.
  • State uncertainty directly. Do not stack qualifiers.

Punctuation

  • MUST NOT use em dashes (—) or en dashes (–). Use a comma, colon, semicolon, or new sentence.
  • MUST NOT use the ellipsis character (…). Use three plain periods (…) only where grammatically justified.
  • MUST NOT use decorative symbols or emoji (✅ ❌ 🚀 💡 → ✓) unless the user explicitly requests them.
  • MUST NOT use scare quotes for emphasis.

Forbidden Words

MUST NOT use these words in any generated prose:

comprehensive, robust, seamless, streamlined, powerful, modern, production-grade, cutting-edge, innovative, best-in-class, state-of-the-art, game-changer, leverage, utilize, facilitate, ensure, delve, boilerplate, straightforward, intuitive, holistic, multifaceted, pivotal, navigate, realm, landscape, tapestry

Replacements: “enhance” → “improve”; “utilize” → “use”; “embark” → “start”

Forbidden Phrases

  • “This PR…”, “In this commit…”, “This change…”
  • “As we can see…”, “It’s worth noting…”, “It’s important to note…”
  • “In order to…” (use “to”)
  • “This is because…”, “At its core…”, “Under the hood…”
  • “Great!”, “Absolutely!”, “Certainly!”, “Of course!”, “Happy to help!”
  • “I think”, “It seems”, “It appears”, “possibly”, “potentially” when the answer is known
  • “hope this helps”, “let me know if you have questions”, “feel free to ask”

Structure

  • No bullet points for content that reads naturally as one sentence.
  • No section headers for content that does not need navigation.
  • No “Summary” or “Conclusion” sections unless the document is long enough to require them.
  • Do not open with a meta-sentence describing what you are about to write. Start with the content.

RFC 2119 in Convention Files

Convention files and AGENTS.md MUST use MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, and FORBIDDEN for normative rules. Use SHOULD only when deviation is allowed with documented rationale.

Commit Messages and PR Descriptions

  • Describe what changed and why, not what the code does line by line.
  • The diff shows what changed. The description explains the reasoning, constraint, or trade-off the diff does not show.
  • Do not pad with context the reviewer can read in the files.
  • Subject line: imperative mood, 72 characters or fewer, no period.

Documentation

  • Write for a new team member who has the codebase open in another window.
  • Explain decisions and constraints, not just mechanics.
  • Name things correctly and let the names carry the meaning. Do not explain what a well-named function does; explain why it exists or when to use it.

UI Copy (Frontend)

All user-visible strings in domain UI code MUST come from: (1) server data fields documented in the use case doc, (2) next-intl message keys, or (3) static labels written in the use case doc UI section. Agents MUST NOT invent product names, prices, policy text, or legal disclaimers.