Compression Rules

These rules govern how source text is compressed into distillate format. Apply as a final pass over all output.

Strip — Remove entirely

• Prose transitions: "As mentioned earlier", "It's worth noting", "In addition to this"
• Rhetoric and persuasion: "This is a game-changer", "The exciting thing is"
• Hedging: "We believe", "It's likely that", "Perhaps", "It seems"
• Self-reference: "This document describes", "As outlined above"
• Common knowledge explanations: "Vercel is a cloud platform company", "MIT is an open-source license", "JSON is a data interchange format"
• Repeated introductions of the same concept
• Section transition paragraphs
• Formatting-only elements (decorative bold/italic for emphasis, horizontal rules for visual breaks)
• Filler phrases: "In order to", "It should be noted that", "The fact that"

Preserve — Keep always

• Specific numbers, dates, versions, percentages
• Named entities (products, companies, people, technologies)
• Decisions made and their rationale (compressed: "Decision: X. Reason: Y")
• Rejected alternatives and why (compressed: "Rejected: X. Reason: Y")
• Explicit constraints and non-negotiables
• Dependencies and ordering relationships
• Open questions and unresolved items
• Scope boundaries (in/out/deferred)
• Success criteria and how they're validated
• User segments and what success means for each
• Risks with their severity signals
• Conflicts between source documents

Transform — Change form for efficiency

• Long prose paragraphs → single dense bullet capturing the same information
• "We decided to use X because Y and Z" → "X (rationale: Y, Z)"
• Repeated category labels → group under a single heading, no per-item labels
• "Risk: ... Severity: high" → "HIGH RISK: ..."
• Conditional statements → "If X → Y" form
• Multi-sentence explanations → semicolon-separated compressed form
• Lists of related short items → single bullet with semicolons
• "X is used for Y" → "X: Y" when context is clear
• Verbose enumerations → parenthetical lists: "platforms (Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, Copilot)"

Deduplication Rules

• Same fact in multiple documents → keep the version with most context
• Same concept at different detail levels → keep the detailed version
• Overlapping lists → merge into single list, no duplicates
• When source documents disagree → note the conflict explicitly: "Brief says X; discovery notes say Y — unresolved"
• Executive summary points that are expanded elsewhere → keep only the expanded version
• Introductory framing repeated across sections → capture once under the most relevant theme