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.
npx skills add jonZlotnik/how-to-agent --skill omit-needless-wordsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jonZlotnik/how-to-agentWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/omit-needless-words)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/omit-needless-words"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/omit-needless-words/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/omit-needless-words"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jonzlotnik/how-to-agent/omit-needless-words.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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 | $0.00052 | $0.00605 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00026 | $0.00302 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00010 | $0.00121 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00060 |
Grade A, and why
omit-needless-words 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 11d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 44 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Omit Needless Words
Every word in technical prose should carry information. Filler phrases, redundant modifiers, and throat-clearing make the reader work harder for the same content. Concise text is not terse text: keep every word the meaning needs, and delete the rest.
When to use
- A draft is finished and ready for a revision pass
- A sentence contains "in order to", "the fact that", "it should be noted", or similar filler
- A modifier restates what the word already says ("completely eliminate", "end result")
- A comment or doc paragraph is longer than the code it explains
Protocol
- Delete filler phrases. "In order to" → "to". "It should be noted that X" → "X". "There is a config option that controls" → "A config option controls".
- Delete redundant modifiers. "Completely eliminate" → "eliminate". "Basically", "very", "quite", "actually" — delete them; keep one only if its removal changes the sentence's meaning.
- Replace phrases with words. "Is able to" → "can". "In the event that" → "if". "At this point in time" → "now". "Has the ability to" → "can".
- Repeat until stable. Re-read the text. If deleting a word does not change the meaning or slow the reader, delete it and read again. Stop when every remaining word is doing work.
Example
Before: It should be noted that in order to run the tests, you will first
need to make sure that the database is actually running.
After: To run the tests, first start the database.
Red flags (rationalizations to reject)
- "The longer version sounds more professional." — It sounds padded. Authority comes from precision.
- "The extra words soften the message." — Softening an instruction makes it ambiguous. Say what to do.
- "Readers can skim past filler." — Readers cannot tell filler from content until they have read both.
- "Articles, transitions, and qualifiers add no information." — They add parsing speed, which is information. Deleting them compresses prose into telegraphic fragments that cost the reader more time than the words saved.
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.
- 11d ago First seen · 44 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A 5ea29692597a
omit-needless-words is a skill published in the GitHub repository jonZlotnik/how-to-agent (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 605 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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