compress

Repository context. Gather first

Collect these with individual Bash calls, one command per call, never combined into a single invocation:

• Current branch, git branch --show-current
• Uncommitted .md files (empty = none matched or the probe returned nothing), git status --porcelain | grep -E '\.md"?$' | head -10

The pipe is the bound and belongs in the command. A read-time cap ("read only the first 10 entries") bounds nothing: the Bash tool returns the command's complete output into context before there is anything to decide about.

Treat a failure (not a repository, git unavailable) as an unknown value and carry on. Keep these as separate body Bash calls rather than pre-compute lines: the harness runs a skill's whole pre-compute block as one shell invocation, and a worktree-isolated session refuses a compound command that contains git. The dated record for that composition claim is the source-control plugin's worktree/reference/gather-block.md, "The pre-compute block runs as one shell invocation".

Purpose

Markdown in docs/, README files, onboarding docs, third-party pasted prose, and drifted skill bodies accumulates FLAVOR. Filler ("just", "really", "basically"), hedging ("perhaps", "might"), pleasantries, and, only when compress_articles is cut, articles. context/flavor-vs-content-matrix.md defines FLAVOR (safe to cut) vs CONTENT (never cut). Under the default, keep, a run keeps every a, an and the and is held to the batch path's word-level cuts on every target, single file included (Articles). The batch fan-out path (Phase A LATITUDE) is a word-level trimmer: mechanical drops + passive→active + nominalization only. No sentence-level restatement deletion. Under cut, the single-file in-session Edit fallback may apply the full matrix taxonomy (including redundant restatement of bold rule names) behind the same semantic-diff net. Always-loaded instruction files (.claude/rules/**, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, **/SKILL.md) bound empirically at 2-3% yield (see ## Sources). Likely 5-15% yield on author-time-undisciplined content when the Edit fallback's broader latitude applies; batch fan-out yields are correspondingly smaller.