I built a compiler for how AI agents should write to you

I kept correcting AI agents in the same ways: "too long," "answer first," "use a diagram," "assume I know the jargon." Each correction improved the current exchange, but the preference was not represented as durable system state. I built /calibrate-comms to make that state explicit. It is an open-source skill inside an Obsidian vault, used by both Claude Code and Codex. The model: nine operational dials The skill does not try to discover a personality type. It calibrates nine choices that directly change how an answer is rendered: Dial Practical question Density Tight sections or full reasoning? Sequence Answer first or chronological build-up? Modality Prose or diagrams for relational content? Abstraction Concrete example or principle first? Tradeoff One recommendation or several options? Detail Main path or edge cases too? Jargon Define terms or assume expertise? Tone Casual, neutral, or formal? Context-giving Should the agent extract missing context or split an overloaded brief? Prior → calibration → directives The workflow has three stages: L1 PRIOR → L2 SAMPLE REACTION → COMPILE → CLAUDE.md hypothesis empirical override shared by both agents Quick mode asks one bespoke forced-choice proxy per axis. Those questions are deliberately labelled as proxies, not validated psychometrics. Deep mode must fetch the exact items from supported open-access instruments before use; if the source cannot be obtained, the skill stays in Quick mode and makes no validation claim. The prior is then challenged through pairwise samples. For sequence, the contrast looks like this: Build-up first: We traced the latency spike to N+1 queries, then found lazy loading in a loop—so the fix is eager loading. Answer first: Fix: eager-load the association. Why: lazy loading in a loop caused N+1 queries and the latency spike. The user's pick is revealed preference. If it contradicts the prior, the sample wins. The compiler is the useful part The final profile is not a score report. A deterministi