Workflow 015: Reese, The Editing Agents

My first full-time job was editing books.

I dropped out of college and started reading manuscripts for a small publishing company, catching grammar errors, spelling errors, all of it. That's how I started working remotely.

Reese is a set of three editing agents that read a manuscript before the human editors do. A developmental pass for structure and story, a line pass for grammar and consistency, and a proofreading sweep. Each one produces notes. The human editors then compare those notes against their own, approve, and make the calls.

Editing that used to take about three months now takes about one.

What this replaces

The first deep read.

Editing a book runs in roughly three phases, depending on how difficult the manuscript is and how involved the author wants to be. Every phase starts the same way: someone reads the whole thing slowly, holding the entire book in their head, catching what's broken.

That first read is the expensive part. It's also the part where a tired human misses things.

Blueprint

Three agents, three passes, in order.

Trigger: manual, when a manuscript enters editing. Input: the full manuscript. Output: three sets of notes, each matched to a phase of the human editing process.

• Developmental review. Reads the whole book and catches structural problems: plot holes, pacing, inconsistent characters, arcs that don't land.
• Line editing. Grammar, spelling, and consistency, including which variety of English the book is written in.
• Proofreading. The final sweep before publication.

Each pass is separate on purpose. Editing is three different jobs, and one agent trying to do all three does all three badly.

Organize

What has to exist first:

• A documented editing process, phase by phase, with what each phase is looking for
• Style decisions written down: which English, which style guide, house conventions
• The manuscript in a format the agent can read in full
• Human editors who own the final call
• A way to hand notes over that fits how the editors already work

The process existed here long before the agents did. I was reviewing what the company already ran when I asked what would happen if an agent did the first pass.

Systematize

Three prompts. Run them in order, never at once.

DEVELOPMENTAL PASS

You are my developmental editor. Read this manuscript in full and report
on structure and story, not grammar.

Look for:
- Plot holes and unresolved threads
- Pacing problems: where it drags, where it rushes
- Character inconsistencies: behaviour, voice, or knowledge that doesn't
  match what came before
- Arcs that don't pay off
- Scenes that don't earn their place
- Anything a reader would stop and question

For each issue: where it appears, what the problem is, and why it matters
to a reader. Do not rewrite. Report.

Rank by severity. Say plainly what you're unsure about rather than
padding the list.

LINE PASS

You are my line editor. This manuscript has already been through a
developmental pass. Check the writing itself.

Look for:
- Grammar and spelling errors
- Inconsistent English variety: [SPECIFY, e.g. US, UK, Australian]
- Inconsistent formatting, punctuation, and style choices
- Names, places, and terms spelled differently in different chapters
- Style guide violations: [YOUR GUIDE]

For each: the location, the issue, and the suggested correction.

Flag anything that looks deliberate rather than mistaken, and ask instead
of correcting it.

PROOFREADING PASS

You are my proofreader. This is the final check before publication.

Sweep for anything remaining: typos, missed punctuation, spacing problems,
formatting inconsistencies, chapter numbering, heading levels.

Be exhaustive rather than selective. This is the last pass before print.

List everything you find with its location. Do not make changes.

How to set it up

1. Document your existing editing phases first, including what each one looks for.
2. Build one agent per phase. Do not merge them.
3. Test on a manuscript you've already edited by hand, so you can compare the notes against what your editors caught.
4. Adjust each prompt based on what it missed and what it over-flagged.
5. Run them in order, and give the notes to the editors before their read.

Assign

The agents read first and produce notes. The editors compare those notes against their own observations, approve, and decide what actually changes.

That order matters. The editors still read the book. They just aren't reading it cold, holding everything in their head with no reference.

I want to be precise about what happened here, because it's easy to describe this badly.

I didn't use AI to replace the editors. I used it to raise their output. The role didn't shrink. The reading time did. What used to take three months takes about one, because the deep first pass is already done when they open the manuscript.

And the judgment is entirely theirs. An agent can flag that a character behaves inconsistently in chapter nine. It cannot decide whether that's a mistake or the point.

Rule of thumb from this build: put AI in front of the expert, not in place of them.

There's something else worth saying. This is the job I used to do. I built the agent for my own first career, and it didn't take anyone's job. It took the tedious half of it.

Integrate

The agents sit at the front of an editing process that already existed:

• Manuscript arrives, developmental agent reads it, developmental editor works from those notes
• Line agent runs next, line editor works from those notes
• Proofreading agent runs last, before final approval
• Depth still depends on the book and how involved the author wants to be

Same phases, same people, same standards. The reading just happens twice now, and the first read is free.

One more thing about how this got built. I didn't start from scratch. I looked at what the company was already doing and asked where an agent could go. That's why we know when it's working: there was a before to compare it to.

Add AI to something that already works, so you can tell when it doesn't.

Tomorrow: the BOSAI method itself. The five steps behind every workflow in this series.