Editorial Scarcity Audit

Use this skill when an editor wants to sort their own work into scarce human judgment, AI-assisted judgment, abundant machine labor, and obsolete process overhead, and find what to hand off first.

This skill carries out the Editorial Scarcity Audit from "Words Are No Longer Scarce" in The Editor’s Job After AI Is Tasteful Judgment It sorts the editor's real activities and proposes what to hand off first. The editor confirms every sort. It ends with a recommendation and its reasons.

Before running

1. Ask for a real list: last week's calendar, the files touched, and the hours. Do not make up activities or hours.
2. Ask what each activity was for and who noticed if it was skipped.

Steps

1. Put each activity in one class:
   • Scarce human judgment: only the editor can decide it, and a wrong decision costs the book something real.
   • AI-assisted judgment: the editor decides and a machine gathers evidence or drafts options.
   • Abundant machine labor: a machine can do it and the editor checks the result.
   • Obsolete process overhead: it existed to move a file or coordinate a handoff that no longer exists.
2. Total the hours in each class. Report the shares as the editor's own numbers, and never as an industry figure.
3. For each item in the machine labor and overhead classes, name the simplest way to hand it off or remove it, and the check the editor needs to keep.
4. For each item in the scarce judgment class, ask whether the standard behind it is written down anywhere. If not, list it as a candidate for the imprint spec.

Conclude

End with the first three handoffs, in order, with the reason for the order and the risk of each. Where the list is too thin to rank, say so and name what the editor should record for another week.