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Background knowledge for answering questions about the claude-bionify plugin, which bolds the leading part of each word in Claude's responses (cosmetic bionic reading). Use it to recommend the right command and the exact key a user needs.
Prerequisite: confirm the plugin is installed
This skill is only useful when the claude-bionify plugin is installed. The skill and
the plugin are separate: skill marketplaces can surface this SKILL.md on its own, so a
user may have loaded the skill without the plugin that actually does the bolding. Without
the plugin there is no MessageDisplay hook and no /claude-bionify:* commands, so every
instruction below is inert.
Before advising on settings or commands, verify the plugin is present:
grep -q 'claude-bionify' ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json 2>/dev/null \
&& echo "plugin: installed" \
|| echo "plugin: MISSING"
If the check fails (or the file does not exist), the plugin is not installed. Tell the user plainly that they have the skill but not the plugin, then give the two install steps and offer to run them:
/plugin marketplace add abullard1/claude-bionify
/plugin install claude-bionify@claude-bionify
These are slash commands the user runs in Claude Code; you cannot invoke them yourself, so present them for the user to run (or paste) and confirm once bolding appears on the next response. Only continue with the settings and command guidance below once the plugin is confirmed installed.
When to use
Load this skill when the user wants to:
- Change a setting (boldness, boundary, word length, acronyms, URLs, headings).
- Turn the formatting on, off, or toggle it.
- Check the current state or reset overrides.
- Learn what
/claude-bionifycommands exist.
Settings
Each setting has a default in plugin.json and a short key used by the live
/claude-bionify:set command. The set key is what you pass to the command, and it is
shorter than the plugin.json field name.
| Setting | set key | Default | Values | Meaning |
| :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| Fixation strength | fixation (alias strength) | 0.5 | 0.1 to 0.9 | Fraction of each word bolded; higher is bolder. Applies to the fraction boundary only. |
| Bold boundary | boundary | fraction | fraction, syllable, log | fraction uses the fixation strength; syllable bolds up to the first syllable; log grows logarithmically so long words are bolded less. |
| Minimum word length | minlen | 4 | 1 or greater | Words shorter than this stay unbolded. |
| Skip acronyms | acronyms | true | on, off | Leave ALL-CAPS acronyms such as API or JSON unbolded. |
| Protect URLs, paths, files | urls | true | on, off | Do not bold inside URLs, emails, file paths, or filenames. |
| Skip headings | headings | true | on, off | Leave markdown headings (lines starting with #) unbolded. |
Commands
All commands live under the /claude-bionify namespace.
| Command | Argument | Action |
| :-- | :-- | :-- |
| /claude-bionify:status | none | Show the current settings and whether bionify is on. |
| /claude-bionify:on | none | Enable bionic formatting. |
| /claude-bionify:off | none | Disable bionic formatting. |
| /claude-bionify:toggle | none | Flip bionify on or off. |
| /claude-bionify:set | <key> <value> | Override one setting live. Keys: fixation (or strength), boundary, minlen, acronyms, urls, headings. |
| /claude-bionify:reset | none | Clear live overrides and restore the plugin.json defaults. |
Examples:
/claude-bionify:set fixation 0.7/claude-bionify:set boundary syllable/claude-bionify:set minlen 5/claude-bionify:set acronyms off
Important: set only accepts the short keys above, not the longer plugin.json field
names. set minlen 5 works; set min_word_length 5 does not. Likewise use acronyms,
urls, and headings, not skip_acronyms, protect_urls, or skip_headings.
Notes
setchanges apply to the next response and persist until/claude-bionify:reset.- Changing the
plugin.jsondefaults instead takes effect on the next session. - The formatting is cosmetic: it never alters the underlying text Claude reads or saves.