trim: tighten 8 skill descriptions for prompt budget - #32361
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Shorten verbose frontmatter descriptions across kanban, creative, devops, and productivity skills. Long descriptions bloat the available_skills list injected into every agent turn — trimming them reduces overhead by ~60-77% per skill with zero information loss. Files changed: - devops/kanban-orchestrator: 315→85 chars (-73%) - devops/kanban-worker: 263→60 chars (-77%) - creative/pretext: 257→88 chars (-66%) - creative/comfyui: 213→76 chars (-64%) - software-dev/hermes-s6-container-supervision: 199→58 chars (-71%) - autonomous-ai-agents/kanban-codex-lane: 175→53 chars (-70%) - creative/touchdesigner-mcp: 168→58 chars (-65%) - productivity/teams-meeting-pipeline: 155→75 chars (-52%)
alt-glitch
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type/refactor
teknium1
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teknium1
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Thanks for targeting recurring skill-index prompt cost; current main still injects skill descriptions into the system prompt (agent/prompt_builder.py:1392, agent/prompt_builder.py:1691-1693).
Problems
- Four replacements exceed the repository's current 60-character hard limit for modernized skill descriptions (
AGENTS.md:888-900):skills/creative/comfyui/SKILL.md:3(76),skills/creative/pretext/SKILL.md:3(88),skills/devops/kanban-orchestrator/SKILL.md:3(85), andskills/productivity/teams-meeting-pipeline/SKILL.md:3(75). - Four diff targets no longer map to current main. Commit
38d3c49aaremovedkanban-codex-laneand moved the s6 skill tooptional-skills/devops/; commit84e1d31e5removed both Kanban worker/orchestrator skills.
Suggested changes
- Reduce the four over-limit values to at most 60 characters.
- Salvage the active paths and repoint the s6 edit to its optional-skill location; omit the deleted Kanban targets.
Automated hermes-sweeper review.
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| name: comfyui | ||
| description: "Generate images, video, and audio with ComfyUI — install, launch, manage nodes/models, run workflows with parameter injection. Uses the official comfy-cli for lifecycle and direct REST/WebSocket API for execution." | ||
| description: "Generate images/video/audio with ComfyUI via comfy-cli + REST/WebSocket API." |
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AGENTS.md:888-900 requires modernized skill descriptions to be 60 characters or fewer. This replacement is 76 characters; please shorten it while preserving the capability signal.
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| name: pretext | ||
| description: "Use when building creative browser demos with @chenglou/pretext — DOM-free text layout for ASCII art, typographic flow around obstacles, text-as-geometry games, kinetic typography, and text-powered generative art. Produces single-file HTML demos by default." | ||
| description: "Browser demos w/ @chenglou/pretext: DOM-free text layout, ASCII art, kinetic typography." |
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AGENTS.md:888-900 requires modernized skill descriptions to be 60 characters or fewer. This replacement is 88 characters; please reduce it to the required limit.
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| name: kanban-orchestrator | ||
| description: Decomposition playbook + anti-temptation rules for an orchestrator profile routing work through Kanban. The "don't do the work yourself" rule and the basic lifecycle are auto-injected into every kanban worker's system prompt; this skill is the deeper playbook when you're specifically playing the orchestrator role. | ||
| description: "Kanban orchestrator playbook: decomposition + anti-temptation rules for routing work." |
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AGENTS.md:888-900 requires modernized skill descriptions to be 60 characters or fewer. This replacement is 85 characters; please shorten it if this skill is restored or otherwise retained during salvage.
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| name: teams-meeting-pipeline | ||
| description: "Operate the Teams meeting summary pipeline via Hermes CLI — summarize meetings, inspect pipeline status, replay jobs, manage Microsoft Graph subscriptions." | ||
| description: "Teams meeting summaries: pipeline status, replay jobs, Graph subscriptions." |
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AGENTS.md:888-900 requires modernized skill descriptions to be 60 characters or fewer. This replacement is 75 characters; please reduce it to the required limit.
teknium1
added
the
sweeper:blast-broad
… budget Every SKILL.md description over 60 chars was silently truncated to 57 chars + '...' in the system-prompt skill index (extract_skill_description, agent/skill_utils.py), destroying the routing signal for 69 of 179 skills — some descriptions ran to 1,005 chars. Rewrites follow the authoring standard: <=60 chars, one sentence, ends with a period, trigger front-loaded, no marketing words, no skill-name repetition. Excess detail already lives in each skill's body. Includes the touchdesigner-mcp trim from PR #32361 (credit: @JeliTron) and aligns with the router-precision direction of PR #48780 (@John-Lussier). Docs catalogs + per-skill pages regenerated via website/scripts/generate-skill-docs.py. Co-authored-by: JeliTron <287797501+JeliTron@users.noreply.github.com>
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Closing with credit — your The rest of the PR aged out from under you: 3 of the 8 targets (the kanban skills) were deleted from main, one moved to Thanks for being early on the prompt-budget problem — the direction was right, the standard just tightened after you submitted. |
… budget Every SKILL.md description over 60 chars was silently truncated to 57 chars + '...' in the system-prompt skill index (extract_skill_description, agent/skill_utils.py), destroying the routing signal for 69 of 179 skills — some descriptions ran to 1,005 chars. Rewrites follow the authoring standard: <=60 chars, one sentence, ends with a period, trigger front-loaded, no marketing words, no skill-name repetition. Excess detail already lives in each skill's body. Includes the touchdesigner-mcp trim from PR NousResearch#32361 (credit: @JeliTron) and aligns with the router-precision direction of PR NousResearch#48780 (@John-Lussier). Docs catalogs + per-skill pages regenerated via website/scripts/generate-skill-docs.py. Co-authored-by: JeliTron <287797501+JeliTron@users.noreply.github.com>
3 participants
Summary
Trims verbose
descriptionfields in 8 SKILL.md frontmatter blocks. Theavailable_skillslist is injected into every agent turn — long descriptions waste prompt budget with zero information gain.Changes
kanban-orchestratorkanban-workerpretextcomfyuihermes-s6-container-supervisionkanban-codex-lanetouchdesigner-mcpteams-meeting-pipelineTotal: ~1,745 chars → ~553 chars (68% reduction)
Impact
skill_view()— descriptions just need to identify, not explain{Tool}: {action/scope}or{Tool}: {brief purpose}