Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100)

Rewrite or review text so it follows the ASD-STE100 controlled-language specification: a curated dictionary of ~3000 approved/unapproved words plus 53 writing rules across 9 sections.

This skill ships its own copy of the dictionary and rules extracted from the official PDF — it does not rely on the model's approximate memory of STE.

Reference files

• reference/ste_dictionary.json — ~3000 word entries. Each entry: {"word": str, "pos": str, "approved": bool, "page": int, "alternatives": [{"meaning_alt": str, "approved_example": str, "not_approved": str}]}. approved: true means the word is on the approved list; false means it's listed as unapproved with one or more suggested replacements.
• reference/grammar-rules.md — all 53 rules + 4 general recommendations (Sections 1–9: Words, Noun clusters, Verbs, Sentences, Procedural writing, Descriptive writing, Safety instructions, Punctuation and word counts, Writing practices), with the normative rule wording and one example each.
• scripts/check_ste.py — flags unapproved words in a text and prints suggested replacements, using the dictionary directly (no LLM guessing).
• scripts/extract_ste_dictionary.py — regenerates ste_dictionary.json from the source PDF if the spec is ever updated (uses pdfplumber, column positions calibrated to Issue 7 layout).

Workflow

1. Check first, don't guess. Before flagging or replacing a word, run check_ste.py against the user's text (or look the word up directly in ste_dictionary.json) rather than relying on memorized STE vocabulary — the dictionary is the authority, not your training data.

   python3 skills/ste/scripts/check_ste.py <file>
   # or
   echo "some text" | python3 skills/ste/scripts/check_ste.py -
   

2. Rewrite using suggested replacements, but verify each substitution preserves meaning (per Rule 1.3/9.2 — never blind word-for-word swap if the sentence needs restructuring instead).

3. Apply the writing rules from grammar-rules.md relevant to the text type: procedural (instructions/steps) → Section 5 + 7 (safety); descriptive (system/theory of operation) → Section 6; any text → Sections 2–4 and 8–9 for noun clusters, verb tense, sentence length, punctuation.

4. Note technical names/verbs as an exception: STE explicitly allows words outside the dictionary if they qualify as a "technical name" (19 categories, Rule 1.5) or "technical verb" (4 categories, Rule 1.12) — see Section 1 in grammar-rules.md. Don't flag those as errors.

5. When reviewing (not rewriting), report each unapproved word with its dictionary-approved alternative and cite the rule number if a structural issue applies (e.g., noun cluster too long → Rule 2.1).

Known limitation

A handful of multi-sense dictionary entries (words with numbered senses like "1. ... 2. ..." packed in one table cell — e.g. BOND, ABSORB) have slightly garbled alternatives text due to PDF table extraction quirks. If a suggestion looks garbled, cross-check that specific word against the PDF directly rather than trusting the JSON blindly.