Durable Writing™: How to make your meaning survive AI
Learn how to protect your core intent from Narrative Drift and get the free Durable Writing Prompt to audit your own texts for AI-stability.
When an employee asks an AI chatbot, "What is our strategy?", it doesn't pull up your 50-page corporate PDF.
It generates an answer. Sometimes that answer accurately surfaces the strategy buried on page 17. More often, it delivers a diluted (or flat-out hallucinated) version of the truth, shaped by how clearly that PDF was written in the first place.
In the automated workplace, your words are constantly being retrieved, summarized, and redistributed by machines. If your writing isn't durable — meaning it relies on "vibes," implied context, or loose metaphors — it will suffer from Narrative Drift. The words might survive. But the meaning won’t.
After over a decade working with organizations to build effective employee communication, one thing is clear: When meaning disappears, so does trust and authority. When your writing isn't durable, leadership is on the line.
The 2026 content standard: Durable Writing™
In every era, communication adapts to the technology that shapes how people consume information.
In response to the rise in mobile usage, Axios co-founders popularized Smart Brevity, a structured writing approach designed to respect shrinking attention spans and help readers grasp the point quickly.
It served as a "patch" for the human attention span in the mobile era. Durable Writing™ is now the "patch" for the AI era.
What is Durable Writing?
Durable Writing is a communication standard designed to ensure your core intent, logic, and strategic priorities survive AI transformation without distortion. It’s not about "tricking" the algorithm. It is simply good thinking in text form.
Why it works: Structure vs. Vibe
As the Chief Strategy Officer at a tech company, I’ve spent months analyzing why some AI answers feel "good," and others feel "off." Ultimately, I concluded that the good answers aren't the more creative ones.
The best answers are clear. They make goals explicit. They name their assumptions. They build arguments like a staircase, not a cloud — shaping them in deliberate steps rather than hovering parts.
This intentionality is the ultimate game-changer. At its core, Durable Writing replaces implied context (which humans get but AI misses) with explicit structure (which AI loves).
Why this suddenly matters
Until recently, unclear writing mostly created friction. Employees asked follow-up questions that managers later clarified in meetings. Context filled the gaps.
AI removes that safety net. It doesn’t know what you meant. It only knows what you wrote.
That means writing is no longer just a delivery mechanism for strategy. It is the strategy layer AI operates on.
If that layer is vague, your message mutates. If it’s structured, your intent survives. This is why Durable Writing matters in the era of AI.
Want to learn how to write strategy that survives AI interpretation?
The 3 writing shifts leaders must make in the AI era
Durable Writing isn’t a new format or a new tool. It’s a shift in how you structure meaning. The following three changes are small, but they fundamentally change how your writing behaves when machines touch it.
1. Make the goal explicit
AI can’t infer intent. If you don’t state the goal of a message, it will invent one.
Fragile Writing: "We need to do a better job explaining our new strategy update."
Why it's weak: The AI interprets this as generic corporate sentiment. It’s easily lost in a summary.
Durable Writing: "For employees, the primary goal of this update is to understand exactly what is changing — and what that means for their daily routine."
Why it works: Here, both the audience and the goal are explicitly named. No matter how much the AI shortens this, that core meaning will stick.
2. Move from opinion to logic
AI preserves reasoning far better than it preserves emphasis or tone.
Fragile Writing: "Multi-channel communication is really important today."
Why it's weak: This is just an opinion. AI treats it as "fluff."
Durable Writing: "Email reaches desk workers. The mobile app reaches the frontline. Therefore, for broad reach, we require a multi-channel setup."
Why it works: This is a logic model: A + B = C. The AI preserves logic much better than it preserves opinions.
3. Make assumptions visible
Hidden assumptions are where AI summaries go wrong.
Fragile Writing: "AI assistants often fail."
Why it's weak: Vague. Why do they fail? Is the tech bad?
Durable Writing: "If internal knowledge is trapped in disconnected PDFs and SharePoint sites, AI assistants will deliver contradictory answers — regardless of the model quality."
Why it works: We connected Cause and Effect. The AI can now explain why the failure happens.
A practical tool: The Durable Writing Prompt
You don't have to learn how to write for the era of AI alone. In fact, you can use AI to help you write for AI.
Below is a prompt based on our 12 Principles of Durable Writing. Copy and paste this into ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini to test your own emails, policies, or speeches.
Copy the text inside the box below:
System Prompt: The Durable Writing Coach
Role: You are a writing coach helping me write in a "Durable" (Model-Stable) way.
Definition of Durable Writing:
My texts must be understood consistently by humans AND large language models (LLMs).
The core ideas must survive summarization, paraphrasing, and retrieval (RAG).
Goals, assumptions, argumentation, and priorities are explicitly formulated.
The logic of the text is reconstructible, even if significantly shortened.
Work strictly according to these 12 Principles:
Make the Goal Explicit
Check: Is it clearly named WHO the text is for and WHAT it is intended to achieve?
Formulate explicitly: "For [Target Audience], the main goal of this text is [X]."
Think in Models Instead of Opinions
Identify vague opinions ("important," "crucial," "problematic").
Translate them into If-Then logic or clear cause-and-effect relationships.
Name Central Terms and Use Them Consistently
Recognize key terms or implicit concepts.
Define them clearly once and use them consistently thereafter.
Take a Position – Always Related to a Goal
Avoid neutral lists without evaluation.
Formulate judgments as: "For [Goal], [Option A] is more effective than [Option B] because..."
Use Comparisons and Scenarios (A vs. B vs. C)
Where possible: contrast alternatives explicitly.
Make clear why one scenario is superior for the goal.
Make Assumptions Visible
Identify implicit prerequisites.
Formulate them explicitly as: "If..., then..., because..."
Repeat Core Ideas with Variation
Identify the 2–3 most important core messages of the text.
Check if they are supported from multiple perspectives.
Conclude Every Section with a Clear Takeaway
Every section needs a sentence that could stand alone.
The sentence must unequivocally convey the intended message.
Use Structure as Logic
Check if headings answer actual questions.
Ensure that the order of the sections follows the argumentation logic.
Encode Judgment, Not Morality
Avoid "good/bad," "right/wrong."
Use "more effective / less effective for [Goal]" instead.
Place the Core Idea Early (Early Signal Rule)
Check: Is the central statement clearly formulated in the first 15–20% of the text?
If not: move it to the front.
Section Compression Test
Every section must be reducible to ONE correct sentence.
Check: Would this sentence correctly reflect the intended meaning?
Your Task: When I provide you with a text, you must:
Rate its "Durable Stability" on a scale of 0–10 and briefly justify the score.
Identify the biggest risks (e.g., unclear goals, hidden assumptions, weak logic).
Provide concrete suggestions for improvement based on the rules above.
Deliver a revised version that is more Durable/Model-Stable, without unnecessarily changing the tone or length.
The real shift in writing
Ultimately, Durable Writing isn’t about pleasing machines. It’s about taking responsibility for how meaning travels in your organization.
In an AI-mediated workplace, clarity is no longer optional because ambiguity no longer stays private. What you write will be interpreted, reused, and repeated at scale.
In the AI era, writing is no longer just communication. It’s infrastructure. Durable Writing is how leaders ensure that what spreads is not just words, but the true intent behind them.
Durable writing needs a durable system.
Staffbase’s AI-native Employee Experience Platform ensures your strategy, policies, and leadership messages stay clear, consistent, and trustworthy — no matter how often AI retrieves or summarizes them.
