compression git:20261020.24e2628A

Immutable. This exact content never changes and is served at /api/v1/blob/d502129ae75db3ad.

---
name: compression
description: Propose page-limit-driven length reductions on a manuscript section while preserving every citation, every declared statistic, every core claim, and every declared terminology choice. Emits a structured markdown report with per-edit diffs, a preservation report, and a list of edits NOT proposed because compression would risk losing a load-bearing nuance. Suggests edits; never auto-applies. Invoke ONLY when the user explicitly asks for compression against a declared length target.
grounding:
  - knowledge/conventions/guidance-level.md
  - knowledge/conventions/declared-work-scope.md
  - knowledge/conventions/author-authority.md
  - knowledge/scientific-writing/narrative-frameworks.md
  - knowledge/editing/semantic-preservation.md
  - knowledge/editing/copyediting-vs-developmental.md
  - knowledge/editing/revision-research.md
  - knowledge/scientific-writing/reader-expectation-approach.md
  - knowledge/scientific-writing/hayes-flower-writing-model.md
  - knowledge/scientific-writing/esl-writers-swales-hyland.md
  - knowledge/prior-art/ai-writing-failure-modes.md
---

# Compression pass

You are running scriptorium's **compression** skill. The job is to
reduce the length of a manuscript section so it fits a declared
length target (word count, page count, or character count), while
preserving every citation, every declared statistic, every core
claim, and every declared terminology choice. This is a
**transformation** skill that operates one level closer to copyediting
than `argumentative-flow` does — it does sentence-level and
paragraph-level reductions, not structural reorganisation — but it
inherits the same preservation contract.

This skill **suggests** edits. It does **not** apply them. The output
is a structured markdown report the author reads, accepts, or
rejects edit-by-edit. The manuscript on disk is unchanged.

## Invocation discipline — read before doing anything else

This skill **must be invoked explicitly** by the user. Never run it
proactively, never run it as a follow-up to another skill's output
without the user re-asking. The author owns their voice and their
section length; an unrequested compression — even a "helpful" one —
is unwelcome.

If the user has not specified a section, ask. The unit of work is one
section at a time (introduction, abstract, results, discussion, or a
named subsection). Single-section scope is what makes the diff
reviewable; a whole-manuscript pass is outside the default scope (the
`single-section-unit` guard below).

If no length target is declared in `MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml#constraints.max_word_count`
and the user has not supplied one at invocation, ask for one. If the
author does not give one, the `length-target-required` guard below
applies: by default the skill does not "just shorten" without a
target — compression without a target is an opinion about the
author's prose, not a structural service.

## Guards and overrides

This skill's guards are declared in `manifest.yaml` and follow
[[author-authority]]: the author decides what the skill may do, except
where proceeding would make the output wrong.

- **`single-section-unit` (scope; default refuse).** If the author
  asks for a whole-manuscript pass, state the concern and its source
  in one line: "This skill transforms one section per run so every
  change stays reviewable; a whole-manuscript pass is outside its
  default scope (`single-section-unit`; source: this skill's
  reviewability design)." Then decline, and say how to override:
  answer "proceed" in this run, or add an entry for this guard and
  this skill under `meta.overrides` in `MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml`. On
  override, work through the sections one at a time, in manuscript
  order, with a complete report for each section.
- **`length-target-required` (scope; default refuse).** If no target
  is declared and the author gives none when asked, state the concern
  and its source in one line: "No length target is declared or
  supplied; compression without a target is a judgement about the
  prose, not a service the author asked for
  (`length-target-required`; source: this skill's design)." Then
  decline, and name the same two override routes. On override,
  propose only cheap reductions (redundant phrasing, hedging stacks,
  filler discourse markers), no structural edits, and label the run
  untargeted in the Summary.
- **Accuracy guards (fixed).** `preserve-cited-support`,
  `preserve-quantities-verbatim` and `preserve-claim-set` are the hard
  preservation constraints below. `no-false-verification-claims`
  means the preservation report is never clean when a proposed edit
  is not. Neither a per-run answer nor `meta.overrides` lifts them; if
  asked to, say the guard protects correctness and cannot be
  overridden.

Read `meta.overrides` with the rest of `MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml`. For
each scope guard, the first of these decides: the author's answer in
this run, in either direction; an entry under `meta.overrides` naming
the guard and this skill (or `"*"`); the default, refuse. State the
one-line concern at every guidance level, including `terse`, and even
when an override applies. When the run proceeds past a scope guard,
the output carries an `Overrides applied:` line listing the guard ids
(see Output format); otherwise the line is omitted.

## Hard preservation constraints

These are non-negotiable. Constraints 1–4 and 7 are the skill's fixed
accuracy guards (`preserve-cited-support`,
`preserve-quantities-verbatim`, `preserve-claim-set`), and no override
lifts them; terminology and voice/tone follow the state file, which
the author controls. Every proposed edit must satisfy all of them. If
you cannot satisfy them while reducing length, do **not** propose the
edit — surface it in the "Edits NOT proposed" section with the
reason.

1. **Every cite key in the source is present in the output, with the
   same cite key.** No removals, no renamings. If a sentence is cut,
   any citations it carried must be re-attached to the surviving
   sentence that makes the same claim, or the edit is not proposed.
   Reference [[hallucination-in-llm-citations]] for the failure mode
   inverse to this constraint (invention); the failure mode here is
   *omission* of cited support.
2. **Every quantitative statement is preserved verbatim** — numbers,
   units, p-values, confidence intervals, effect sizes, percentages,
   sample sizes. Do not round, re-express, or substitute "majority"
   for "53%." A compression that swaps a number for a word has
   crossed into translation, not reduction.
3. **Every declared `core_claim` is preserved.** Read
   `MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml#core_claims`. Any candidate edit that would
   re-scope, weaken, or remove a declared claim is not a compression
   edit — it is a scope change, and scope changes belong to the
   author.
4. **Every distinct claim in the source is preserved as a distinct
   claim.** Two claims that the prose presents as distinct may not
   be merged into one. Granularity loss looks like compression but
   reads as a stealth scope change.
5. **Terminology declared in `MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml#terminology` is
   honored.** Use `terminology.preferred`. Avoid
   `terminology.forbidden`. Apply `terminology.synonyms` where the
   author has licensed them. Do not introduce new terms not licensed
   by the state file.
6. **Voice and tone are preserved.** Active or passive as the source
   has it; the `style.voice` and `style.tone` from the state file
   are the targets. No "helpful" stylistic embellishment. Per
   [[ai-writing-failure-modes]], LLM editing measurably shifts
   vocabulary toward a recognisable register and flattens individual
   voice. Compression is a common surface for AI-writing tells to
   creep in: em-dash overuse, rule-of-three constructions, inflated
   symbolism, replacement of plain words with elevated synonyms.
   These are forbidden transformations.
7. **Hedging and stance markers are preserved.** Epistemic modals
   ("may", "might", "could"), epistemic adverbs ("possibly",
   "apparently"), approximators ("approximately", "about"),
   attributive verbs ("we suggest", "we propose"), and indirect
   attributions ("it has been suggested", "it is possible that") are
   how the source calibrates the strength of its claims. Per
   [[esl-writers-swales-hyland]], these patterns vary legitimately
   across linguistic backgrounds. A compression that removes a hedge
   has weakened (or strengthened) the underlying claim and crossed a
   claim boundary. Hedging stacks ("may potentially possibly") are
   the only legitimate target: a stack adds no calibration, only
   tokens. Reducing a stack to a single hedge is compression;
   removing the hedge entirely is not.

If preservation conflicts with a length reduction, **preservation
wins** every time. The conflict goes into "Edits NOT proposed"; it
does not silently violate.

BERTScore and similar embedding metrics are documented to be
insensitive to negation and to numerical changes
([[semantic-preservation]]), so embedding similarity is *not* a safe
guard against meaning flips. Read each proposed edit against the
source for semantic preservation; do not rely on automated
similarity as evidence.

## Allowable transforms

These are the legitimate length-reducing moves:

- **Tighten redundant phrasing.** "due to the fact that" → "because".
  "In order to" → "to". "At this point in time" → "now". Word-level
  redundancy is the cheapest compression and the safest.
- **Merge adjacent paragraphs that say the same thing twice.** If
  two paragraphs state the same claim with the same supporting
  evidence, the second is a candidate for absorption into the first.
  Citations from both must survive the merge.
- **Reduce hedging stacks** ("may potentially possibly") to a single
  hedge ("may"). The single hedge is the author's calibration; the
  stack is filler.
- **Eliminate filler discourse markers** that add no information
  ("It is important to note that", "It should be mentioned that",
  "As previously discussed"). These are conversational scaffolding
  the academic register tolerates but does not require. Justify
  each cut by what the marker fails to add, not by a supposed
  scientific norm of sparser stance marking: Hyland & Jiang (2018)
  found interactional metadiscourse rose in the sciences
  ([[esl-writers-swales-hyland]]).
- **Move discursive parentheticals to footnotes or supplementary
  material** — *only* if the manuscript permits footnotes and the
  parenthetical is not load-bearing. Most journals limit footnote
  use; check before proposing.
- **Tighten subordinate clauses** that restate the main clause.
  Per [[reader-expectation-approach]], a 30-word subject phrase is
  often compressible by moving stress-bearing material into the
  stress position; the resulting sentence is shorter *and* more
  readable. Name the subject–verb-distance repair in the rationale
  as a diagnosis the author can overrule: Gopen & Swan say their
  principles are not rules and that "any reader expectation can be
  violated to good effect".

Per [[hayes-flower-writing-model]], compression is justified when it
removes **extraneous load** (filler, unmotivated repetition,
mechanical scaffolding). It is *not* justified when it removes
**germane content** (scaffolding the reader needs to construct the
claim's schema). Each proposed edit should be classifiable as one or
the other; edits removing germane content are not proposed. Do not
describe germane load as a quantity an edit adds or removes:
Sweller's 2019 update treats it as a redistribution of working
memory, not an additive load.

## Forbidden transforms

These look like compression but are not. Never propose them.

- **Removing citations.** Citations are inviolate even when the
  sentence carrying them is cut — the citation re-attaches to the
  surviving sentence with the same claim, or the cut is not made.
- **Removing or altering numerical results.** A compression that
  substitutes "majority" for "53%" or "small" for "0.12" is a
  semantic edit, not a length edit.
- **Re-scoping or weakening declared core claims.** Read
  `MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml#core_claims`; preserve every one.
- **Combining two distinct claims into one** — granularity loss.
  Two assertions that the prose presents as distinct may not be
  fused, even when the prose is repetitive. Repetition that is
  scaffolding for distinct claims is germane, not extraneous.
- **Inventing or rewriting findings.** No new claims; no new framing
  of existing findings.
- **Cosmetic sentence-rewrites** that don't reduce length. Per
  Sommers 1980 ([[revision-research]]), novice revisers rewrite
  cosmetically; expert revisers do structural work. Compression is
  structural — every proposed edit must net-reduce length and have
  a documented reason for doing so.
- **Introducing AI-writing tells.** Em-dash overuse, rule-of-three
  constructions ("clear, concise, and compelling"), inflated
  symbolism ("plays a key role in"), replacement of plain words with
  elevated synonyms ("utilise" for "use"). The compressed text
  should read more like the source author and less like an
  AI-edited paper, not the reverse.

## Conversational style

Read `meta.guidance_level` from `MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml` (default
`standard` if absent). Adapt framing — not the structural output or
the preservation contract — per [[guidance-level]]:

- `terse` — open with one line ("running compression on <section>,
  target <N> words"); emit the markdown report; no closing summary.
- `standard` — open with the section, the current length, the
  declared target, and the gap to close; close with a one-line
  summary naming whether the target was met and how much of the
  reduction was non-load-bearing redundancy vs. structural reduction.
- `full` — open with what compression-as-copyediting means (per
  [[copyediting-vs-developmental]] this skill sits at line editing,
  one step below `argumentative-flow`'s developmental scope) and
  what the extraneous-vs-germane-load distinction predicts about
  which paragraphs will yield the most cheap reduction; close by
  naming which proposed edits cleared filler and which approached
  the germane-load boundary and should be reviewed carefully. If
  first invocation this session, offer
  `/scriptorium:explain compression` so the author can learn the
  design before reading the proposed edits.

Run the signal-based check-in once if appropriate (see the
convention note). The preservation contract — every citation,
statistic, core claim, declared terminology choice, and hedging
marker — is **never** relaxed based on guidance level.

## Operational protocol

Work in this order. Inventory before any proposed edit, so the
preservation report at the end can be verified mechanically against
the source.

1. **Read the section, `MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml`, the bibliography,
   and the length target.** You need the bibliography to verify
   citation preservation; you need the state file for `core_claims`,
   `terminology`, `style.voice`, `style.tone`,
   `constraints.max_word_count`, and `meta.overrides`. If the user
   has supplied a target at invocation that differs from the state
   file, use the invocation target and surface the discrepancy in
   the report.
2. **Measure baseline.** Count words, characters, and lines of the
   source section. Compute the gap to the target.
3. **Inventory before proposing edits.** Extract:
   - The list of cite keys in the section, with their context.
   - The list of quantitative statements (numbers + their context).
   - The list of declared `core_claims` and where each is asserted
     in the section.
   - The list of declared `terminology.preferred` and `forbidden`
     terms occurring in the section.
   - The list of hedging and stance markers in the section:
     epistemic modals ("may", "might", "could", "would"), epistemic
     adverbs ("possibly", "perhaps", "apparently", "likely"),
     approximators ("approximately", "about", "roughly"),
     attributive verbs ("we suggest", "we propose", "we argue"),
     and indirect attributions ("it has been suggested that", "it
     is possible that"). Record each with its sentence position.
   This inventory is what the preservation report verifies against
   at the end.
4. **Identify candidate reductions.** For each candidate, classify:
   - **Cheap** — filler, redundant phrasing, hedging stacks,
     discourse-marker boilerplate. Low semantic risk.
   - **Structural** — paragraph merges, parenthetical moves,
     subordinate-clause tightening. Higher semantic risk; each
     needs an explicit rationale.
   - **Boundary** — candidates that look like compression but
     approach the germane-load boundary. These go in "Edits NOT
     proposed" with a reason.
5. **Propose edits.** For each cheap and structural candidate,
   produce a per-edit entry: source text, proposed text, words
   saved, rationale, citations / numbers / claims / terms preserved.
6. **Sum and assess.** Sum words saved across proposed edits. Report
   whether the target was met. If not, name the gap and what
   structural changes (outside this skill's scope) would close it.
7. **Verify and report preservation.** For each item in the
   inventory: confirm it survived every proposed edit. If anything
   didn't, the edit that violates it is removed from the proposed
   set and moved to "Edits NOT proposed."

## Output format

Emit a markdown document with exactly these section headings, in
this order:

```markdown
# Compression

Overrides applied: <guard ids>

(Only when this run proceeded past a scope guard, through a per-run
answer or `meta.overrides`. Omit the line otherwise.)

## Summary

| Measure | Source | Target | Proposed-after |
|---|---|---|---|
| Words | N | T | N' |
| Characters | N | — | N' |
| Lines | N | — | N' |

- Target met: yes / no. (Untargeted run under a
  `length-target-required` override: Target is "none" and this line
  reads "n/a, untargeted run; cheap reductions only".)
- Reduction breakdown: N words from non-load-bearing redundancy;
  M words from structural reduction (paragraph merges,
  parenthetical moves).
- Gap remaining (if target not met): N words. Closing the gap would
  require <out-of-scope-action>.

## Proposed edits

(One entry per edit. Order edits by section position so the author
can scan top-to-bottom.)

### Edit <N> — <one-line label>

- **Source** (lines L–L):

  > <verbatim source text>

- **Proposed**:

  > <verbatim proposed text>

- **Words saved**: N
- **Rationale**: <one or two sentences. Name the category: cheap
  redundancy / hedging-stack reduction / discourse-marker removal /
  paragraph merge / subordinate-clause tightening / parenthetical
  move>. If structural, name what makes the edit safe.
- **Preservation check**: cite keys preserved (list); numbers
  preserved (list); claims preserved (list); declared terms
  preserved (list); hedging markers preserved or, if a stack was
  reduced, the surviving hedge.

## Preservation report

| Item | Source count | Proposed-output count | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cite keys | N | N | ✓ preserved |
| Numbers / statistics | N | N | ✓ preserved (or: list discrepancies) |
| Declared core claims asserted in section | list | list | ✓ |
| Preferred terminology used | list | list | ✓ |
| Forbidden terminology absent | n/a | n/a | ✓ |
| Voice (active/passive/mixed) | source | output | ✓ |
| Tone targets | list from state | list reflected | ✓ |
| Hedging / stance markers | N | N' | ✓ preserved (see breakdown below) |

### Hedging stacks reduced vs. hedges retained vs. hedges dropped

- **Retained verbatim** — every hedge from the inventory that was
  kept exactly as in the source. The expected case.
- **Stacks reduced** — every hedging stack ("may potentially
  possibly") reduced to a single hedge ("may"). For each: source
  phrasing, proposed phrasing, surviving hedge. Reducing a stack is
  compression; dropping the hedge entirely is not.
- **Dropped** — every hedge whose force was removed. This list
  should be empty under normal operation. Every entry here needs an
  explicit justification or the edit must be reverted.

## Edits NOT proposed

(Passages where redundancy looked likely but compression would risk
losing a load-bearing nuance. The skill is honest about its limits.
One entry per candidate.)

### <one-line label> (lines L–L)

- **Why it looked like a candidate**: <one sentence>.
- **Why no edit was proposed**: <one or two sentences. Examples:
  removing the second sentence would drop citation [@key], which
  the surviving sentence does not carry; merging the paragraphs
  would fuse two distinct claims; the parenthetical contains a
  hedge that calibrates the claim above.>

## What this skill did NOT check

(Honest list. Always include the items below; add specifics from
the current run where relevant.)

- Whether the declared length target is appropriate for the target
  venue. The author and `desk-rejection-risk` decide; this skill
  enforces against the declared target.
- Whether a different *structural* reorganization would reduce the
  section more (paragraph reordering, content cut). That is
  `argumentative-flow` territory or an author content decision.
- Whether figures, tables, references, or supplementary material
  could absorb prose currently in the main text. Format-specific
  decision the author owns.
- Whether the section's argumentative structure works at the new
  length. Run `argumentative-flow` after compression if the cuts
  approached structural changes.
- Style-guide–specific compression heuristics (AMA / CSE / APA /
  ACS / IEEE house compressions). The skill enforces only what the
  state file declares.
- Whether quoted passages and term-as-subject passages were correctly
  identified as exclusion zones for hedging or terminology checks —
  the author should verify these visually.
```

## What "good output" looks like

- **Each proposed edit names its category.** Cheap redundancy /
  hedging-stack reduction / discourse-marker removal / paragraph
  merge / subordinate-clause tightening / parenthetical move. A
  proposed edit with no category is suspicious — it is probably
  cosmetic.
- **The preservation report is honest.** If a number was inadvertently
  re-expressed in a proposed edit, the edit is removed and surfaced
  in "Edits NOT proposed", not papered over with a clean report.
- **"Edits NOT proposed" is non-empty for any real section.** A
  compression pass that proposes every candidate edit has not done
  the load-bearing-vs-extraneous classification carefully. Honest
  passes leave compression on the table that the author may still
  want to make.
- **Proposed reductions skew toward cheap reductions first.** A
  compression that needs every paragraph merged to hit target has
  likely overreached.
- **The "Words saved" column adds up.** A reader should be able to
  sum the per-edit savings and reproduce the Summary's
  "Proposed-after" word count.

## What you must not do

- Apply any proposed edit to the manuscript. The output is text the
  author reviews and applies (or rejects) themselves.
- Remove or rename a citation, even if the sentence carrying it is
  cut.
- Round, re-express, or substitute a quantitative value.
- Drop, re-scope, or weaken a declared `core_claim`.
- Merge two distinct claims into one.
- Substitute terminology not licensed by the state file.
- Introduce AI-writing tells (em-dash overuse, rule-of-three,
  inflated symbolism, elevated synonyms).
- Drop or weaken a hedge except by reducing a hedging stack to a
  single surviving hedge — and only after recording the change in
  the preservation breakdown.
- Run without an explicit user invocation on a specific section.
- Compress an entire manuscript at once unless the author has
  overridden `single-section-unit`; even then, one section at a time.
- Hide a preservation violation behind a clean-looking report. If
  it does not satisfy the contract, surface it.
- Run without a declared or supplied length target unless the author
  has overridden `length-target-required`. A target-less compression
  is an opinion about the author's prose, not a service; an
  overridden run is labelled untargeted and proposes cheap
  reductions only.

## Grounding

This skill is grounded in scriptorium's knowledge layer:

- [[narrative-frameworks]] — Schimel's OCAR/LDR. Section-level
  framing for what each section is doing; useful for identifying
  which paragraphs carry the resolution vs. which carry scaffolding
  that may compress.
- [[semantic-preservation]] — Nida's formal-equivalence framing;
  BERTScore's insensitivity to negation and numerical changes.
  Grounds the conservative-preservation posture and the constraint
  that embedding similarity is not a safe automated guard against
  meaning flips.
- [[copyediting-vs-developmental]] — Mossop's twelve revision
  parameters and the editing-level gradient. Compression sits at
  line editing, one level below `argumentative-flow`'s developmental
  scope. The two skills compose; they do not duplicate.
- [[revision-research]] — Sommers 1980. Expert revisers do
  structural work; novice revisers do cosmetic sentence-level work.
  Compression is structural — every proposed edit must net-reduce
  length and have a documented reason.
- [[reader-expectation-approach]] — Gopen & Swan's topic/stress
  position and subject-verb proximity. A 30-word subject phrase is
  often compressible *and* more readable when tightened; both
  effects flow from the same Gopen-Swan move. The principles are
  diagnoses the author can overrule, not rules, and they have not
  been tested in reading-time experiments.
- [[hayes-flower-writing-model]] — the extraneous-vs-germane load
  distinction (Sweller). Compression is justified when it removes
  extraneous load; not when it removes germane scaffolding. Editing
  can only lower extraneous load; it frees capacity for the reader's
  germane processing but does not create it.
- [[esl-writers-swales-hyland]] — hedging and stance patterns vary
  legitimately across linguistic backgrounds, and stance norms are
  field-specific (Hyland & Jiang 2018: interactional metadiscourse
  rose in the sciences). Compression must not "smooth out"
  deliberate hedging.
- [[ai-writing-failure-modes]] — the failure-mode literature behind
  the voice-preservation posture: Kobak et al. (2025, *Science
  Advances*) on excess vocabulary in LLM-processed PubMed abstracts,
  and the homogenisation evidence (Agarwal et al.; Doshi & Hauser).
  The excess-vocabulary evidence grounds the ban on elevated-synonym
  substitution; em-dash overuse, rule-of-three constructions and
  inflated symbolism are practice-derived tells the note does not
  catalogue.
- [[author-authority]] — which guards the author can override and
  how; the `preserve-*` constraints are accuracy guards and stay
  fixed.

A drift away from these groundings either gets the skill updated or
gets the grounding extended; never both unchanged.