# Debloat

Compress an artifact that has accreted into bloat, padding, over-qualification, fused...

- Repository: https://github.com/LilMGenius/paperthin (1365 stars)
- Category: Engineering
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2026-11-01
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill debloat -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill debloat -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill debloat -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill debloat -g -a gemini-cli -y`

## Description

Compress an artifact that has accreted into bloat, padding, over-qualification, fused sentences, walls of enumeration, adjacent restatement, down to its load-bearing density, meaning preserved. Use when prose is correct and current but has grown verbose or patched-over and you want it tight without a full rewrite.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

Cut a bloated artifact to its load-bearing minimum: same meaning, fewer words.

## Goal

An artifact that is correct and current can still rot a second way: it accretes. Each edit bolts a qualifier onto the nearest sentence, a rule gets restated wherever it might apply, an enumeration grows into a wall, until a reader must study what they should skim. `debloat` compresses that bloat to its load-bearing density: every claim that carries weight survives, every word that does not is cut. It is not a rewrite (`re0`), a dedup (`ssotize`), or a tell-remover (`dedash`, `detool`), it is a density pass on prose that is otherwise fine.

## Workflow

1. Pin the artifact and read it end to end; note in one line what each section must convey, the load-bearing content that has to survive.
2. Find the bloat, not the content: padding that adds length but not meaning; a qualifier or parenthetical the sentence holds without; a fused sentence carrying three ideas; a wall of enumeration where a rule plus a short list would do; a point restated within reach of itself; litigation-history (why-we-decided-it) where the rule alone suffices.
3. Compress in place: cut the padding, split the fused sentence or drop its dead clause, collapse the wall, keep a repeated point once. Move nothing to another artifact and re-derive nothing.
4. Preserve every load-bearing claim, a rule, fact, constraint, or example that carries weight. If cutting a word would lose one, keep the word.
5. When the bloat is really duplication across artifacts, or the content has drifted stale, stop and name it: hand duplication to `ssotize` and drift to `re0`. `debloat` only tightens.
6. Re-read cold and cut again, the first pass always leaves some.

## Rules

The rest: https://github.com/LilMGenius/paperthin/blob/HEAD/skills/depth/debloat/SKILL.md