---
alwaysApply: false
globs: ["**/*"]
description: "Structure for reports after work: result first, decision next, facts as a table. Use when you summarise finished work."
---

# Work Report

**Open with the result.** The first sentence says what is different now. Not
the branch, not the commit count, not the phase number. If the work found a
legal breach, a data loss or a broken promise, that is the first sentence.
State in the second sentence whether anything reached a user yet.

**Ask for the decision next, before the evidence.** Name each decision you
need as a question with a proposed answer. A reader who stops after the
second block must still know what you want from them. A report that points
at another document for its recommendation asks nothing.

**Explain every technical term the first time you use it.** Add one short
clause in the same sentence. Count the terms you leave unexplained: allow at
most one per 100 words. A word your tools print is still a term the reader
may not know.

**Give every number a unit and a comparison value.** Write "the documents say
142 migrations, the database has 149", never "142/143/118 → 149". A number
without its counterpart cannot be judged.

**Give every identifier three words of meaning.** Write "error 23505, a
duplicate-key refusal" and "ADR 0051, the locking decision". A bare
identifier moves the work of looking it up to the reader.

**Write complete sentences.** Every sentence carries a finite verb. Headline
fragments such as "Phase 5." and "Four findings, two reproduced" score well
on every readability formula and still force the reader to guess the
relation. Allow no fragment outside a table cell or a list item.

**Say what happened.** Report the work in positive form. Collect what you did
not do in one closing block, so a negation appears once and not in every
paragraph.

**Use literal statements.** A guard does not "print", a limit does not
"hold", a finding does not "weigh". Name the actor and the action.

**Number your sections without gaps.** Phases 1, 2, 4, 5 make the reader hunt
for phase 3. Either number every section you report, or drop the numbers.

**Put repeated facts in a table.** Findings, checks and files repeat the same
fields. A table with one row per item beats four paragraphs of prose.

**Close with the open points and the reason for each.** Name what stays
undone, why you stopped, and what would unblock it.

**Boundary.** This skill fixes the shape and the order of the report. The
plain-language and readability disciplines fix the wording. The measures they
carry are necessary and not sufficient: a report can pass every formula and
still be unreadable, which is why the shape has its own rules here.

**A reviewer checks:**

- the first sentence states the outcome, not the branch or the tooling;
- every decision the writer needs appears as a question with a proposal;
- unexplained technical terms stay at or below one per 100 words;
- every number carries a unit and a comparison value;
- every identifier carries a short plain-word meaning;
- every sentence outside a table or list carries a finite verb;
- numbered sections run without a gap;
- the open points appear at the end, each with its reason.