Writing Style

Beyond personas, Draft has global writing style settings that apply to all transformations. These control baseline behavior like verbosity, tone, and formatting preferences.

Personas vs. Writing Style

Personas let you quickly switch between different profiles. Writing Style sets your default preferences that apply when no specific persona rule overrides them.

Style Settings

Configure these settings in Draft → Settings → Writing Style:

Verbosity

Controls how much detail Draft includes in transformations:

Level	Behavior
Concise	Shortest possible output. Great for Slack, quick replies.
Normal	Balanced output. Suitable for most communication.
Detailed	Thorough explanations. Good for documentation.

Tone

Sets the default communication style:

Tone	Description
Direct	Straightforward, no hedging. Gets to the point.
Formal	Professional and polished. Good for external comms.
Friendly	Warm and approachable. Great for team messages.
Casual	Relaxed and conversational. Personal communication.

Formatting

Default output format preference:

Format	When to use
Prose	Regular paragraphs. Best for emails and documents.
Bullets	Bullet points when appropriate. Good for summaries.
Mixed	Draft chooses based on content. Most flexible.

Hard Rules

Hard rules are absolute constraints that Draft will never break, regardless of instruction or persona. These protect important content:

Preserve Quotes

Quoted text is never modified

Never Change Numbers

Numbers, dates, and figures are preserved exactly

English Variant

US or UK spelling conventions

American

Critical for accuracy

Hard rules exist to prevent Draft from accidentally changing important data. Keep "Never Change Numbers" enabled unless you have a specific reason to disable it.

Configuration File

Writing style settings are stored in your Draft configuration file:

~/Library/Application Support/Draft/defaults.json

Default Configuration

defaults.json

{
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "writingStyle": {
    "verbosity": "normal",
    "tone": "direct",
    "formatting": "prose"
  },
  "hardRules": {
    "preserveQuotes": true,
    "neverChangeNumbers": true,
    "englishVariant": "american"
  }
}

Advanced: Sampling Parameters

For advanced users, Draft exposes the language model sampling parameters. These control the randomness and creativity of outputs:

Parameter	Default	Effect
temperature	0.7	Lower = more predictable, higher = more creative
topP	0.9	Nucleus sampling threshold
repeatPenalty	1.1	Reduces repetition in output
maxTokens	1024	Maximum output length

For power users

Most users should leave sampling parameters at their defaults. Adjust these only if you understand how they affect model behavior.

Per-Action Settings

Different actions (rewrite, summarize, translate, extract) can have their own system prompts. These are configured in the actionContracts section:

defaults.json (excerpt)

"actionContracts": {
  "rewrite": {
    "systemPrompt": "You are a precise text transformation engine..."
  },
  "summarize": {
    "systemPrompt": "You are a summarization engine..."
  },
  "translate": {
    "systemPrompt": "You are a translation engine..."
  },
  "extract": {
    "systemPrompt": "You are a data extraction engine..."
  }
}

Advanced feature

Editing action contracts requires understanding of prompt engineering. Changes here can significantly affect output quality.