instruct-compact

instruct-compact is a skill for Claude Code from digital-stoic-org/agent-skills. It costs 70 tokens per session (1,055 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A short instruction block for telling Claude Code's context-summary command what information to keep.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for preparing copy-paste instructions before using /compact, Claude Code's command for summarising a session.
Why use it?
It helps preserve important paths, decisions, and task details when a long session is shortened.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: model in frontmatter; mentions Claude Code.

Part of the dstoic plugin — 14 skills shipped together

Good fit It is for preparing copy-paste instructions before using /compact, Claude Code's command for summarising a session.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/digital-stoic-org/agent-skills/instruct-compact
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 digital-stoic-org/agent-skills --skill instruct-compact
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/digital-stoic-org/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install dstoic, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 14 skills.

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.

agentmods badge for instruct-compact

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/digital-stoic-org/agent-skills/instruct-compact.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/digital-stoic-org/agent-skills/instruct-compact)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/digital-stoic-org/agent-skills/instruct-compact"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/digital-stoic-org/agent-skills/instruct-compact.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 70 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,055 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00070 $0.01055
Opus 5 $0.00035 $0.00528
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00211
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00105

Measured 7d ago against content hash 3f3d1101c957, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

instruct-compact 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 7d 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.

dstoic/skills/instruct-compact/SKILL.md · 80 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 80 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Instruct Compact

Synthesize the current session into a directive block the user copy-pastes into /compact <paste>. The block tells the built-in summarizer what to preserve verbatim, what to compress, and what to drop — so intentional compaction keeps signal and sheds noise.

Output: a fenced block only, printed to terminal. No file written. Target: 250-400 tokens. Speed: 3-5s.

Distinct from /save-context (durable CONTEXT-*-llm.md for resuming later). This is ephemeral steering for compaction now.

When to Use

  • User is about to run /compact and wants to control what survives
  • Long session nearing auto-compaction; user wants to front-load survival priorities
  • Triggers: "instruct compact", "compaction instructions", "steer compact", "prepare compaction"

Instructions

  1. Read the conversation (last 15-20 messages) — no shell needed unless confirming a file path.
  2. Synthesize the 8 sections (below). Write directives to the summarizer, not the content itself — e.g. "Preserve exact path x/y.md", not a copy of the file. Embed a literal only when losing it is expensive (exact paths, the one key decision).
  3. Print the block using the template. Nothing else after it except one line: Copy the block above into /compact.

The 8 Sections

Section Directive to summarizer Tier
Goal State the purpose in 1 sentence; keep verbatim, anchor the summary to it PRESERVE
Hot Files List exact paths + 3-word role; preserve paths character-for-character PRESERVE
Decisions Each decision + its rationale; the why is unrecoverable, keep it PRESERVE
Learnings Non-obvious facts found mid-session (bugs, constraints, gotchas); keep — costly to rediscover PRESERVE
Dead ends Approaches TRIED and abandoned + why; PRESERVE so they aren't re-attempted. Distinct from Drop (noise): dead ends = negative knowledge worth keeping PRESERVE
Next 2-4 next actions. IMPORTANT: use heading "Next" — compaction grep-favors next/todo/pending for survival PRESERVE
Open threads Unresolved questions / mid-flight work so it isn't dropped COMPRESS-OK
Drop Name what to discard: verbose tool output, resolved detours, raw logs DROP

Read the full file on GitHub · 80 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.

  1. 7d ago First seen · 80 lines · 70 tokens per session scan A 3f3d1101c957

Subscribe to this mod's changes

instruct-compact is a skill published in the GitHub repository digital-stoic-org/agent-skills (20 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 70 tokens to every session and 1,055 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-30.

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