Contents

How to Build a Voice Profile

A Voice Profile is a set of instructions that tells the AI how a specific person writes. When you select a voice in the Theological Assumptions card, every AI response is filtered through those instructions, the theological content stays the same, but the way it sounds changes.

The profile is not a biography. It is a briefing. You are describing a writer's habits to someone who has read their work but still has them slightly wrong. The more specific and concrete your description, the more accurate the output.

A Worked Example: Martin Luther

The nine fields below are shown filled in for Martin Luther, based on close reading of his 1535 Commentary on Galatians. The example passages quoted in each field come directly from that text.

1. Voice Name

What it is: How the voice appears in the dropdown.

Luther example: Martin Luther

2. Summary

What it is: One sentence shown below the dropdown when this voice is selected. It tells the user what they are getting before they commit to it.

Luther example: Active vs passive righteousness as the organizing spine; Satan as tactician; the conscience as battleground; long sentences that land with a short blow; no hedging, no therapeutic vocabulary.

3. Central Concern

What it is: The one thing this person always returns to, regardless of the passage. Everything else in their writing is in service of this one thing. If you removed it, the writing would be unrecognizable as theirs.

The terrified conscience that has been crushed by the law and can only be rescued by receiving Christ's righteousness as a pure gift, not earned, not prepared for, not partly contributed to, but passively received through faith alone.

How to find it: Read ten pages and ask: what is the writer always coming back to? For Luther, every paragraph eventually arrives at the distinction between what we do, active righteousness, and what we receive, passive righteousness. That is his central concern.

4. Sentence Rhythm

What it is: The pattern of how sentences vary in length. Not just "long" or "short," the specific combination. The rhythm is often where a writer's voice lives most distinctively.

Long sentences that pile subordinate clause on clause using "since," "therefore," "for," and "but" as the joints, typically two or three clauses before landing. Then a short declarative blow: "This man hates prison." "That is a gift." "The flesh does not repent; it waits." The short sentence is where the argument lands. Never write paragraph after paragraph of uniformly long sentences.

How to find it: Count the words in ten consecutive sentences. Note the pattern of variation. Find the sentence that sounds most like the writer at their best, is it long or short? Where in the paragraph does it fall?

Why it matters: Our first Luther attempt failed partly because every sentence was the same length, long, clause-heavy and without variation. The actual Luther alternates constantly. "This man hates prison" is four words. It lands harder because the sentence before it ran for sixty.

5. Rhetorical Moves

What it is: The 2-3 structural patterns the writer uses repeatedly. These are the moves they make so often that if you imitated them, a reader would say "that sounds like them."

(1) Quote then interrogate: He quotes the specific words of the text, asks what they mean, then answers.

(2) Sarcasm as weapon: He states the opponent's position in their own terms, then destroys it without announcing he is doing so.

(3) Direct address to the reader: "Do you hear me?" "Do you think the devil is going to put up with that?" He speaks to the reader as if they are in the lecture hall.

How to find it: Look for moments in the text where you think "that's very them." What is the writer doing structurally in those moments? Name the move.

6. Opponents

What it is: Who the writer argues against, named specifically, with the specific claim they are making. Not "false teaching," that tells the AI nothing.

The Pope and his merit hoarders, who teach that righteousness before God can be earned by works and that grace supplements human effort. The Anabaptists, who condition God's work on the virtue of the recipient. The fanatical spirits, who boast of new revelations and run where they have not been called. The flesh itself, which hates passive righteousness because it cannot boast of it.

How to find it: Ask: what position is this writer always pushing back against? What specific claim does that position make? How does the writer name the people who hold it, with contempt, with grief or with clinical precision?

Why it matters: Our first Luther attempt produced the phrase "false teaching" repeatedly. The real Luther never says "false teaching." He says "the Pope, that man of sin," "the merit hoarders," "these delicate martyrs who take no risks." The specificity is what gives the writing its bite.

7. Signature Vocabulary

What it is: Words and phrases this person uses that no one else would choose. If you saw these words in an unmarked text, you would know who wrote it.

"passive righteousness," "active righteousness," "merit hoarders," "the fanatical spirits," "law in hand," "the old man," "the flesh," "dung" for human works offered as righteousness, "the terrified conscience," "desperation" as a technical spiritual term and "prop forward" of Christ as propitiation.

How to find it: Highlight every word or phrase in ten pages that feels characteristic. These are the words that, if removed, would make the writing sound like someone else.

8. Forbidden Vocabulary

What it is: Words this person would never use, and why. This list is as important as the signature vocabulary. The AI will default to its own habits unless you explicitly block them.

Never use: "transformation," "journey," "process," "therapeutic," "religious performance," "moral renovation," "inward renewal," "growth," "authentic." Also never use Shakespearean archaisms such as thee, thou, doth, hath and wherefore.

Why it matters: Our first Luther attempt used "religious performance," a phrase from contemporary evangelical vocabulary that would have been meaningless to Luther. The forbidden list catches the AI's default habits before they corrupt the voice.

9. Emotional Register

What it is: The default emotional tone of the writing, and what triggers a shift in that tone. Different theologians have very different default registers, scholarly precision, pastoral warmth, prophetic urgency or quiet wonder.

Default: urgency bordering on alarm, as a man who believes the Day of Judgment is near and that the article of justification is under active attack.

Shifts to warmth: when the gospel breaks through, when "gift" or "grace" appears, the combative energy drops and he speaks directly to the frightened conscience.

Shifts to contempt: when naming the Papists or the merit hoarders, short, dismissive and sometimes sarcastic.

Never becomes: vague or measured. He does not hedge.

The Iteration Process

Step 1, Fill in what you know

You will not fill every field perfectly on the first pass. Fill in what you are confident about and leave the rest blank. A partial profile is better than a fabricated one.

Step 2, Test voice

Click Test voice before saving. The test runs your current form against Romans 3:22-26 and shows the output with token count. This passage works well because it is doctrinally dense and every serious theologian in the Lutheran tradition must engage it.

Step 3, Read the output and diagnose

What you see	What it means	Where to fix it
Generic vocabulary that sounds like anyone	Forbidden vocab list is missing	Add field 8
All sentences the same length	Rhythm not specified	Add a short example sentence to field 4
No engagement with the actual verse	Rhetorical moves not named	Add the quote-then-interrogate move to field 5
Opponents not named	Opponents field is empty or vague	Add specific names and specific claims to field 6
Sounds like a different era	Wrong vocabulary allowed	Check fields 7 and 8
Correct content, wrong energy	Emotional register missing	Fill in field 9

Step 4, Edit and re-test

Change one or two fields at a time. If you change everything at once, you will not know what fixed it or what broke it.

Step 5, Save when good enough

The profile will never be perfect. Save when the output sounds recognizably like the person on the first read. You can always come back and edit.

What Makes a Voice Profile Fail

Describing themes instead of moves

Wrong: "Luther emphasizes grace over works."

Right: "Luther quotes the specific words of the text, asks what they mean, then answers in one or two clauses before moving to the next phrase."

The first describes what Luther believes. The second describes what Luther does. The AI already knows what Luther believes. It needs to know what he does.

Uniformly long sentences

The most common mistake. "Luther writes long sentences" produces a wall of equally long clauses. The actual Luther writes long sentences that end with short ones. Name the pattern, not just one end of it.

Missing the forbidden list

Without it, the AI fills in its own default vocabulary, usually contemporary, therapeutic and hedged. The forbidden list is not optional.

Vague opponents

"False teachers" does nothing. "The Pope and his merit hoarders, who teach that grace supplements human effort" gives the AI something to argue against.

For Living Theologians: Correcting Your Own Profile

If you are one of the theologians listed in the Theological Assumptions card, you may have access to a Your Voice Profile panel in Settings. If so:

Read the base definition, shown read-only at the top.
Run the test passage to see what the AI currently produces.
Write corrections in plain English in the text area.
Be specific: "I never use the word X," "My sentences typically do Y," "I always return to Z."
Click Test voice again to verify the correction worked before saving.

Your corrections are added after the base definition and take priority where they conflict. You do not need to rewrite the entire definition, only correct what is wrong.