A drift corrector for terseness discipline. The method — re-anchor, audit
the work in flight, correct forward, report, and the tone that firing this
is not an accusation — lives in
${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/context/re-anchor-audit-correct.md.
Read it; this file adds only what is specific to terseness discipline.
The discipline this re-anchors
Say it in fewer words or lines when nothing of value is lost. Two surfaces, resolved separately per the method doc's ladder.
Code — a standards convention owns this
The source of truth is the consuming organization's simpler-code convention: prefer the smaller form when it costs no correctness, readability, test coverage, observability, or convention conformance. Read it where it lives; re-anchor its two load-bearing parts rather than restating them:
- its named failure modes — the canonical smells a reduction must not introduce (speculative generality, the wrong abstraction, YAGNI);
- its constraints never traded for line count — clarity, test coverage, error handling at boundaries, established conventions, and observability survive every cut.
When the consuming project declares no such convention, re-anchor that same shape as the portable baseline: fewer lines is the default only when none of those constraints is spent to get there.
Markdown — no standards doc yet (flagged gap)
Say the same thing in fewer words with no semantic loss — drop filler, hedging, and restatement, never a directive, qualifier, threshold, or example. Unlike the code side, prose terseness usually has no dedicated standards convention to discipline: when the consuming project's standards source declares one, route through it; when it does not, treat that as a flagged gap (a candidate upstream standards addition), not license to invent a rubric in this skill. The operative safety net for prose reduction is a compress capability's semantic-diff discipline — route batch prose work there when that capability is installed, and otherwise run that same discipline in-thread rather than hand-rolling criteria here.
Audit — what to look for
Name concrete, located findings (per the method doc's step 2):
- prose padded with filler, hedging, or a restatement of what an adjacent sentence already said;
- code carrying speculative parameters, dead branches, or hand-rolled boilerplate a built-in would replace;
- a long form kept where a shorter one loses nothing of value.
Correct each forward now, but only where the reduction is free: tighten the prose without dropping a directive/qualifier/threshold/example, and shrink the code without spending clarity, tests, error handling, conventions, or observability. When a cut would cost any of those, leave the longer form and say why.
Routing — where batch and proactive work live
- Batch prose remediation → the docs-hygiene compress capability when that plugin is installed (its semantic-diff safety net is the guardrail for large prose cuts); otherwise run that same semantic-diff discipline as an explicit in-thread pass rather than hand-rolling a rubric here.
- Batch code reduction → the code-tidying batch-simplify capability over a change set when that plugin is installed; otherwise reduce in-thread against the simpler-code convention, spending no clarity, test, error handling, convention, or observability to do it.
- Proactive code-side enforcement is NOT here. It lives in review and design gates that cite the simpler-code convention; this corrector re-anchors the discipline and corrects the work in flight, it does not stand in for those gates.
What this skill does NOT do
- Does not trade a constraint for brevity. A shorter form that spends clarity, a test, error handling, a convention, or observability is a wrong reduction, not a win.
- Does not invent markdown-terseness criteria. The markdown standard is a flagged gap; the skill routes to the compress capability's discipline rather than manufacturing its own rubric.
- Does not fabricate a finding. Work already at its tight form audits clean; say so.
Gotchas
- Terseness is not duplication. Removing a second copy of a fact is
/discipline:point-dont-copy; removing wasted words from a single copy is this skill. - The failure mode is over-cutting: a "concise" edit that quietly drops a qualifier or a boundary case has traded meaning for length. Judge every cut by what it costs, not by how many words it saves.