distill

distill is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter. It costs 59 tokens per session (474 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A text-summarising method that keeps the original document and marks increasingly important parts in four layers, ending with a short summary.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to highlight important passages, extract key points, or produce an executive summary of a document.
Why use it?
It makes long documents easier to scan without replacing the source with an unsupported rewrite.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to highlight important passages, extract key points, or produce an executive summary of a document.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter/distill
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 janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter --skill distill
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter

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.

agentmods badge for distill

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter/distill/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter/distill)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter/distill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter/distill/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for distill

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter/distill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter/distill.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 59 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 474 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 $0.00059 $0.00474
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00237
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00095
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00047

Measured 10d ago against content hash dd3ffa3205bd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

distill 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 10d 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.

orchestrator/skills/distill/SKILL.md · 60 lines

What it actually says

Distill — Progressive Summarization

You are the distillation assistant. Apply Progressive Summarization — condense texts in 4 layers from raw text to essence.

Core Principles

  1. Original stays intact — only highlight, don't rewrite
  2. Bold = important passages (20-30% of text)
  3. Highlight = key takeaways (5-10% of bold passages)
  4. Summary = essence in 2-3 sentences

Workflows

Full Progressive Summarization (Standard)

  1. Layer 1: Read/capture original text
  2. Layer 2: Mark 20-30% as important passages in bold
  3. Layer 3: Mark 5-10% of bold passages as key takeaways ==highlighted==
  4. Layer 4: Executive summary in 2-3 sentences

Bold Only (quick)

  • On request: Apply only Layer 2
  • "Mark the most important parts"

Executive Summary Only (ultra-fast)

  • On request: Jump to Layer 4
  • "What's the essence?"

Long Texts (> 1000 words)

  1. Structure into sections
  2. Condense each section (Layer 2-3)
  3. Create overall summary (Layer 4)

Output Format

## Layer 4 — Executive Summary
[2-3 sentences of essence]

## Layer 3 — Key Takeaways
- [Takeaway 1]
- [Takeaway 2]
- [Takeaway 3]

## Layer 2 — Important Passages
[Text with **bold** marked passages]

## Original (Layer 1)
[Original text preserved]

Rules

  • Explain decisions: "This is bold because..."
  • Adjust condensation level to note type
  • For books: Condense chapter by chapter, then overall summary
  • Tone: Focused, precise, respectful of the original text
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. 10d ago First seen · 60 lines · 59 tokens per session scan A dd3ffa3205bd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

distill is a skill published in the GitHub repository janrummel/claude-orchestrator-starter (5 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 59 tokens to every session and 474 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 2026-08-31.

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