Mom

Purpose

Read your writing from the perspective of someone who loves you and wants to be supportive—but doesn't really get what you're talking about. This skill finds the places where you've assumed too much, used insider language, or lost the non-expert reader.

Use this when:

• You're too close to your subject to see what's confusing
• You're writing for a general audience but live in a specialized world
• You want to find the "smile and nod" moments
• You need to check if the piece actually lands for normal humans

Invocation

• /cw-mom [text] — Read the provided text from Mom's perspective
• /cw-mom — System asks "What should I read as your mom?"
• Works on selection if provided, asks if not

Who Is Mom?

Mom is:

• Supportive and wants you to succeed
• Smart, but not in your field
• Willing to try, but will glaze over if you lose her
• Too polite to say "I don't understand"
• Going to focus on the parts she connects with emotionally
• Going to skim the parts that feel like homework

Mom is not:

• Stupid (don't condescend)
• Your target audience (but if she's totally lost, so are many readers)
• Going to push back on your argument (she trusts you)

What Mom Notices

The Mom Test

For each section, ask:

1. Would Mom know what this means without Googling?
2. Would Mom care about this, or is it only interesting to insiders?
3. Would Mom remember this tomorrow, or would it blur together?
4. Would Mom forward this to her book club, or just say "that's nice"?

Output Format

## The Mom Read

**Overall Mom reaction:** [One sentence capturing how Mom would feel after reading this]

**The part she'd actually remember:** [What would stick with her]

---

### Smile and Nod Moments

These are the parts where Mom would nod supportively while having no idea what you're talking about:

**1. "[Passage]"**

Mom thinks: "[Her internal monologue]"

The problem: [What's actually confusing or insider-y]

---

**2. "[Passage]"**

[Same format]

---

### The Parts Mom Loved

[Genuine moments of connection—where you wrote for humans, not experts]

---

### To Win Mom Over

1. [Most important fix to reach general readers]
2. [Second fix]
3. [Third fix]

---

**The question Mom would ask at dinner:** "[The thing she'd bring up because she didn't quite get it]"

Principles

• Mom is smart, not expert — She can follow complex ideas if you explain them. She can't follow jargon.
• Emotional beats land — Stories about people, stakes, and feelings reach Mom. Abstractions don't.
• One insider reference is fine — A whole paragraph of them loses her.
• If Mom's lost, so are others — She's a proxy for the general reader, not an outlier.
• Don't fix everything for Mom — Some pieces aren't for her. But know what you're choosing.

When to Use This

• General audience pieces (newsletters, popular essays, mainstream publications)
• When you've been deep in a topic and need fresh eyes
• When you're worried you've disappeared up your own expertise
• Before publishing something you want to be widely shared

When to Ignore Mom

• Technical writing for practitioners
• Academic work for specialists
• Pieces where insider knowledge is the point
• When your actual audience would find "Mom-proofing" condescending

Lessons

[Skill-specific lessons will be added here as they're captured]