I made an open-source Claude Code skill inspired by Jordan Peterson’s essay-writing guide. Here’s how it researches, drafts, and revises an essay

sadarume — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 21:53:15 +0000

Oct 30

I made a Claude Code skill inspired by Jordan Peterson’s essay-writing guide

#ai #llm #tools #claude

2 min read

I made a Claude Code skill inspired by Jordan Peterson’s essay-writing guide

sadarume — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 21:51:33 +0000

I made JP Essay, an open-source skill that takes Claude Code through research, outlining, drafting, revision, and fact-checking to produce one final essay.

The idea is to make the writing process inspectable. You can open the research notes, examine the outline, and follow the revisions that led to the final text.

How it works

Starting with a question, JP guides Claude through a sequence of writing tasks:

Research the topic and gather sources.
Build an outline and write a draft.
Review the argument with a separate AI reader.
Reorganize and rewrite the text.
Check factual claims and produce the final essay.

One part I find particularly interesting is the fresh-reader step. A separate agent reads the draft and reconstructs its argument from memory. That feedback helps identify ideas that were difficult to follow before another revision.

It’s an AI review, so it can still miss problems. The fact-checking stage also doesn’t remove the need to verify important claims yourself.

What’s behind the workflow

The implementation combines a SKILL.md file, intermediate Markdown artifacts, and a checking script that validates the required steps.

Keeping the intermediate work makes it possible to investigate where something went wrong. An unclear conclusion might come from the outline, a missing source, or a revision that weakened the argument.

JP produces one final essay per run. The comparison image shows adapted excerpts from two separate runs: one using direct writing and another using a short-format adaptation of the JP workflow.

Try it

JP is free and open source. You need your own Claude Code access; model usage isn’t included.

Website
Source code and installation

What would you test first to evaluate a writing workflow like this: factual accuracy, argument structure, readability, or the amount of editing it saves?

The inspiration came from Jordan Peterson’s essay-writing guide, particularly its emphasis on refining sentences and reorganizing paragraphs to clarify an argument. I wanted to bring that deliberate process into Claude Code. JP is an independent project with no affiliation with Jordan Peterson.

DEV Community: sadarume

I made an open-source Claude Code skill inspired by Jordan Peterson’s essay-writing guide. Here’s how it researches, drafts, and revises an essay

I made a Claude Code skill inspired by Jordan Peterson’s essay-writing guide

I made a Claude Code skill inspired by Jordan Peterson’s essay-writing guide