debloat
Compress an artifact that has accreted into bloat — padding, over-qualification, fused sentences, walls of enumeration, adjacent restatement — down to its load-bearing density, meaning preserved. Use when prose is correct and current but has grown verbose or patched-over and you want it tight without a full rewrite.
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Install
Works with every agent the skills CLI supports.
npx skills add https://github.com/lilmgenius/paperthin --skill debloat- 01
Install
Run the command in your project. The CLI asks which agents to install for.
- 02
Describe the task
Ask your agent for something this skill covers. It loads debloat automatically when relevant.
- 03
Review the result
The agent follows the SKILL.md steps, scripts and references bundled with the skill.
SKILL.md
The instructions your agent reads when the skill is triggered.
Cut a bloated artifact to its load-bearing minimum: same meaning, fewer words.
Goal
An artifact that is correct and current can still rot a second way: it accretes. Each edit bolts a qualifier onto the nearest sentence, a rule gets restated wherever it might apply, an enumeration grows into a wall — until a reader must study what they should skim. debloat compresses that bloat to its load-bearing density: every claim that carries weight survives, every word that does not is cut. It is not a rewrite (re0), a dedup (ssotize), or a tell-remover (dedash, detool) — it is a density pass on prose that is otherwise fine.
Workflow
- Pin the artifact and read it end to end; note in one line what each section must convey — the load-bearing content that has to survive.
- Find the bloat, not the content: padding that adds length but not meaning; a qualifier or parenthetical the sentence holds without; a fused sentence carrying three ideas; a wall of enumeration where a rule plus a short list would do; a point restated within reach of itself; litigation-history (why-we-decided-it) where the rule alone suffices.
- Compress in place: cut the padding, split the fused sentence or drop its dead clause, collapse the wall, keep a repeated point once. Move nothing to another artifact and re-derive nothing.
- Preserve every load-bearing claim — a rule, fact, constraint, or example that carries weight. If cutting a word would lose one, keep the word.
- When the bloat is really duplication across artifacts, or the content has drifted stale, stop and name it: hand duplication to
ssotizeand drift tore0.debloatonly tightens. - Re-read cold and cut again — the first pass always leaves some.
Rules
- Cut words, never load-bearing claims. Every rule, fact, and constraint that was there is still there; only the density changed.
- Preserve the artifact's voice and structure; compress within it, do not re-style it.
- Not a rewrite, a dedup, or a tell-remover: re-derive nothing (
re0), move nothing to another home (ssotize), and leave em-dashes and stack nouns todedash/detool. - Respect intended richness: human-facing prose meant to teach or orient (a quickstart, a worked example) earns its length — compress the bloat, not the accessibility.
- A pass that finds nothing genuinely bloated changes nothing.
- Mutate with edit-safety: assert each target exists (report a MISS, never a silent no-op), edit unicode-safe (
PYTHONUTF8=1), replace per occurrence, and script a large structural move.
Verification
Before finishing:
- Every load-bearing claim present before is present after — only words were cut.
- The result reads tighter to a cold reader, and reads as intended-terse, not amputated.
- Anything that was duplication or drift, not bloat, was handed to
ssotize/re0, not force-compressed.
FAQ
What does the debloat skill do?
Compress an artifact that has accreted into bloat — padding, over-qualification, fused sentences, walls of enumeration, adjacent restatement — down to its load-bearing density, meaning preserved. Use when prose is correct and current but has grown verbose or patched-over and you want it tight without a full rewrite.
How do I install debloat?
Run npx skills add https://github.com/lilmgenius/paperthin --skill debloat in your project. The skills CLI detects the agents you use and copies the skill into the right folder. For Claude Code you can also place the skill folder at ~/.claude/skills/debloat/ (personal) or .claude/skills/debloat/ (project).
Which AI agents can use debloat?
Any agent that supports the open Agent Skills format (a folder with a SKILL.md file), including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, Cline, OpenCode and more.
Is debloat safe to install?
No partner security audit is available yet. Skills can run commands and scripts, so read the SKILL.md and any bundled files before installing.
Who maintains debloat?
It is published by lilmgenius in lilmgenius/paperthin. It has 1,199 recorded installs.
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