Copy Editing Skill: Tighten Marketing Copy You Have

Copy Editing is a Claude skill for improving marketing copy that already exists — tightening wordy paragraphs, sharpening messaging, and refreshing pages that have gone stale. It doesn't write from a blank page; it works on what you hand it.

What it does

Hand it copy you've already written and it returns a structured review rather than a rewritten blob. Three things distinguish it from pasting text into a chat window and asking for "better":

It works only from your material. No invented statistics, no borrowed positioning from some other company's site. If a claim needs evidence you didn't supply, it says so instead of filling the gap.

It labels assumptions and missing evidence. The most useful output isn't the edit — it's the list of places where your copy asserts something it hasn't earned. That's the part a human editor charges for.

It returns next actions. Structured output with practical steps, not a wall of tracked changes you then have to triage.

When to reach for it

The skill is written to trigger on a specific situation: you have copy, and it isn't good enough yet. Concretely, it's built for moments like —

• "This reads awkwardly" or "it's too wordy"
• "Sharpen the messaging" on a page that's gone vague
• "This content is outdated" — refreshing a page written for an older positioning
• A content audit where you're sweeping many pages for the same problems
• Proofreading before something goes live

It's the wrong tool for a blank page. If you need copy written from nothing, that's a different job and this skill will politely have very little to work with.

What's actually inside

One skill file. No connectors, no agents, no external services, no API keys of its own.

That matters more than it sounds, because it sets the entire setup cost. A Claude skill is a folder with a SKILL.md in it — instructions Claude reads and applies when the situation matches. There's no service to authenticate, nothing to keep running, and nothing to break next month when an API changes.

Setting it up

Here's the honest version, because this is where most people stop.

The GitHub route. The skill lives in a public repository, in a skills/copy-editing folder. To use it you clone or download the repo, find that folder among the others, copy it into your project's .claude/skills/ directory (or your user-level skills directory), work out which of those two you actually wanted, restart your session, and confirm it loaded. If you've done this before it's five minutes. If you haven't, it's the evening you decided to stop.

None of that is hard, exactly. It's just a stack of small unfamiliar things — what a repo is, where .claude/ lives, the difference between project and user scope — and any one of them is enough to end the attempt.

The Taku route. Open it in Taku and it's mirrored into your workspace ready to run. No clone, no directory to find, no scope decision.

That's the entire difference, and it's worth being precise about what it is: the skill is the same either way. Taku doesn't make it better. It removes the assembly.

Who made it

Published by Emily, drawn from Corey Haines' marketing skills collection — a public repository of marketing-focused Claude skills. Copy Editing is one of several in that set, which is worth knowing if you like this one: the sibling skills are built to the same shape.

If you've never used a skill before

This is the part most guides skip, so: you don't need to understand GitHub, Codex, or Claude Code to use this.

Those are the normal routes, and each has its own learning curve — repositories and branches for GitHub, a terminal for Codex and Claude Code. They're worth learning eventually. They are not worth learning today if what you actually want is for someone to look at your landing page copy and tell you which sentences aren't pulling their weight.

Taku is a desktop workspace for exactly that gap: find something someone already built, mirror it into your own workspace, and run it — without reproducing their environment first. You can browse the free app library to see what else is there, and Claude skills explains the format if you want the background.

Download Taku and run this skill in a couple of minutes. Taku is in Beta, and the Mac app is available now; there's also an experimental, unsigned Windows build if you're on Windows 10 or 11.

FAQ

What is the Copy Editing skill?

A Claude skill that reviews existing marketing copy — tightening wordy sections, sharpening messaging, and flagging claims that lack evidence. It works from material you supply rather than generating new copy.

Do I need a GitHub account to use it?

No. The skill's source lives on GitHub, but you don't need an account, and you don't need to clone anything if you run it through Taku instead.

Is it free?

The skill itself is free. It runs inside Claude, so you need Claude access of your own. For what Taku costs, see pricing.

What does it need to run?

Nothing beyond Claude — one skill file, no connectors, no agents, no API keys. That's why setup is quick regardless of which route you take.

Can I edit it?

Yes. It's a text file of instructions, so you can adapt the review criteria to your own brand standards — which is usually the second thing people do after running it once.

Key points

• Reviews copy you already have; it isn't a from-scratch writer.
• Most valuable output is the list of unevidenced claims, not the rewrite.
• One skill file, no connectors or API keys, so setup cost is low either way.
• The GitHub route works and asks you to learn several unfamiliar things first.
• You don't need GitHub, Codex, or Claude Code to run it.