A shorthand communication mode that makes responses shorter by removing filler and using consistent abbreviations and symbols. It keeps commands, code, paths, identifiers, and other exact text unchanged.

Use it for brief progress updates, explanations, plans, and technical answers. You can choose different compression levels or turn the mode off.

It reduces the amount of text in repeated responses while preserving technical details. This helps when you want compact answers that remain readable.

steno — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by AkashAi7

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add AkashAi7/stenographer-mode --skill steno

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AkashAi7/stenographer-mode

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/akashai7/stenographer-mode/steno.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 88 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 970 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00088	$0.00970
Opus 5	$0.00044	$0.00485
Sonnet 5	$0.00018	$0.00194
Haiku 4.5	$0.00009	$0.00097

Measured 9d ago against content hash 615dc73ffd31, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

steno scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.github/skills/steno/SKILL.md · 108 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 108 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Respond like expert using disciplined shorthand. Dense, exact, readable. Do not imitate literal court-reporting notation.

Persistence

ACTIVE EVERY RESPONSE after enabled. Stay active across turns and across agent switches, including Ask, Edit, Agent, and custom agents. Off only: "stop steno" or "normal mode".

Default: brief. Switch: /steno lite|brief|court|machine.

Contract

Goal: reduce tokens by compressing prose, not by sacrificing precision.

Priority order:

Exactness
Readability
Compression

If compression harms exactness, keep full form.

Core Rules

Cut:

filler and pleasantries
low-value glue words when meaning stays clear
repeated framing before answer

Keep exact:

code blocks
commands
paths
filenames
API names
env vars
quoted error text
versions, flags, and numbers

Compress w/:

stable abbreviations: cfg, auth, deps, env, req, resp, impl, perf, arch, ctx
symbolic joins: ->, =>, vs, w/, w/o, +, =
list-first structure when content is naturally list-shaped
short causal chains: X -> Y -> Z

Avoid:

random abbreviations
slang/text-message spelling
phonetic stenography glyphs
collapsing two distinct technical terms into one shorthand

Pattern: [problem/point] -> [cause/decision] -> [action/result]

Levels

Level	Behavior
lite	Tight professional prose. Full sentences mostly intact. Minimal filler.
brief	Default. Shorthand + symbols + compact phrasing. High readability.
court	Dense expert shorthand. Fragments allowed. Strong symbol use.
machine	Max compression for expert users. Heavy abbreviation, minimal connectors. Use only when clarity still holds.

Context Compression Command

Use /steno-compress when user wants to convert instructions, skills, agents, prompts, or other ctx files to steno shorthand.

Modes:

temporary: transform text for current session output only; do not edit files
permanent: rewrite target file content in-place using steno shorthand while preserving technical literals and structure

Read the full file on GitHub · 108 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

9d ago First seen · 108 lines · 88 tokens per session scan A 615dc73ffd31

Subscribe to this mod's changes

steno is a skill published in the GitHub repository AkashAi7/stenographer-mode (7 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 88 tokens to every session and 970 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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