Public Smoothing

This note defines the public-facing smoothing posture for text and metadata that leave the private workspace.

The aim is not deception. The aim is to reduce unnecessary stylometric and metadata distinctiveness in public artifacts.

In plain terms:

make the language boring
make the metadata boring
make the formatting boring
do not let personal fingerprints ride along when they are not needed for audit

Why This Exists

Authorial fingerprinting does not depend on vocabulary alone. It can also emerge through:

spacing habits
punctuation habits
line-break rhythm
casing quirks
repeated idioms
document-structure preferences
metadata and timestamp patterns
semantic tilt and preferred framing

The purpose of smoothing is to reduce that total signal before public release.

Smoothing Target

The desired outcome is a low-distinctiveness house voice.

That means:

neutral wording
normalized spacing
normalized punctuation
consistent list style
minimal expressive flourish
stable metadata formatting

Public artifacts should read as disciplined and legible, not intensely personal.

Scope

The smoothing pass is intended for:

review packets
public documentation
challenge materials
archival metadata
any text that does not require raw private voice for evidentiary reasons

It should not silently rewrite artifacts whose original wording is itself the thing being audited.

Current Reference Tool

The current reference tool is scripts/universal_smoother.py.

The first implementation is intentionally modest. It focuses on reducing obvious stylometric noise and normalizing JSON metadata shape. It can also emit a machine-readable smoothing receipt so the before-and-after surface is not purely subjective.

It is not a claim of perfect anonymity. It is a precautionary reduction step.

For routine release work, the preferred wrapper is scripts/prepare_public_artifact.py. That helper runs the smoother, writes a smoothing receipt, and emits a small manifest with hashes so the bundle is easier to hand off or archive.

House Rules

When a public artifact is smoothed, prefer:

ASCII punctuation where reasonable
single spaces between words
no trailing whitespace
bounded blank-line use
sorted JSON keys
stable indentation
flattened repeated punctuation
plain wording over signature phrasing

Smoothing Receipt

Where practical, smoothing should emit a receipt.

That receipt may include:

the smoothing mode
basic before-and-after formatting metrics
counts of repeated punctuation or spacing noise
metadata normalization indicators

The point is not to claim a complete stylometric proof. It is to leave behind a small factual record that a reduction pass actually happened.

Audit Constraint

Smoothing must not undermine the public audit surface.