claude-be-serious

Claude Code plugin that enforces serious scholarly, textbook-grade prose.

The plugin is aligned with the Codex be-serious plugin. Its target voice is a serious scholar writing in a well-edited university textbook: precise, orderly, restrained, and analytic. It suppresses slang, sycophancy, filler, emoji, enthusiasm markers, marketing adjectives, forced informality, anthropomorphized software descriptions, and Chinese internet or workplace colloquialisms.

Install

Install from the public marketplace repository:

claude plugin marketplace add lulucatdev/claude-be-serious
claude plugin install be-serious@claude-be-serious

Then start a new Claude Code session, or run /reload-plugins in an existing session.

For temporary session-only loading from a local checkout:

git clone https://github.com/lulucatdev/claude-be-serious.git
claude --plugin-dir ./claude-be-serious

Components

• .claude-plugin/marketplace.json: marketplace manifest for GitHub installation.
• .claude-plugin/plugin.json: Claude Code plugin manifest.
• output-styles/be-serious.md: forced output style. It applies automatically while the plugin is enabled.
• hooks/hooks.json: SessionStart hook with matcher startup|resume|clear|compact.
• hooks/session-start-inject.sh: POSIX shell and awk hook handler. It emits hookSpecificOutput.additionalContext for Claude.
• skills/be-serious/: active style skill plus style profile and examples.
• skills/be-serious-review/: prose review and repair skill.
• tests/: local validation checks.

Why both output style and hook

Claude Code output styles directly modify the system prompt and can be shipped by plugins. This plugin therefore uses a forced output style as the primary register mechanism.

The SessionStart hook is still necessary because Claude Code matches SessionStart on startup, resume, clear, and compact. The compact matcher restores a compact reminder after context compaction, which is the failure mode this plugin is designed to prevent.

The hook intentionally injects the style profile and core examples, but not the extended examples. Claude hook output strings are capped at 10,000 characters, so the hook payload remains compact. The full style policy remains in the forced output style, and extended examples are available to the active skills.

Local test

claude plugin validate ~/Developer/claude-be-serious
/bin/sh ~/Developer/claude-be-serious/tests/check-hook.sh
/bin/sh ~/Developer/claude-be-serious/tests/check-style-contract.sh

To load the plugin for a Claude Code session without installing it through a marketplace:

claude --plugin-dir ~/Developer/claude-be-serious

Inside Claude Code, inspect hooks with /hooks and plugin state with /plugin.