CONCISE

Cuts prose filler from AI coding agent responses - trailing summaries, restated context, hedging, over-long preambles - while leaving code, commit messages, and analysis depth fully intact. Covers subagents too, not just the main session.

Install • Before / After • How it works • Commands • Configuration • Benchmarks • Support

Works two ways:

• Full plugin (Claude Code only): the compression rules, plus a live per-response prose-budget bar in the statusline that measures every response as it happens - main session and subagents alike.
• Agent Skills (any compatible tool): the same compression rules as a portable skill - Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Gemini CLI, and every other tool that supports the open Agent Skills format. No live bar outside Claude Code - most tools have no equivalent of its per-turn measurement hooks to drive one.

Before / After

Before:

Sure! I'd be happy to help you with that. Let me take a look at the file first.

Great, I found the issue! The problem is that the function is checking if (x = 5) instead of if (x == 5), which is an assignment rather than a comparison. This is a very common bug in JavaScript and other C-like languages. Let me fix that for you now.

I've made the fix. To summarize what I did: I changed the assignment operator to a comparison operator on line 42. This should resolve the issue you were experiencing. Let me know if you have any other questions!

After:

Line 42: if (x = 5) is assignment, not comparison. Fixed to ==.

Same fix, same code, same clarity - just without the wrapper.

Install on any Agent Skills compatible tool

npx skills add 0xyph3r/CONCISE

Detects which supported tool(s) you have (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Codex, Gemini CLI, and more) and installs the concise skill for each - just the compression rules, no live bar. See Agent Skills clients for the full list of compatible tools. Target one specific tool with npx skills add 0xyph3r/CONCISE --agent <name>.

Install the full plugin (Claude Code only)

This repo doubles as a Claude Code plugin marketplace - add it once, then install like any other plugin:

claude plugin marketplace add 0xyph3r/CONCISE && claude plugin install concise@concise

That's it - no clone, no separate installer to run. Restart Claude Code (or start a new session) and it's active. On first session start it will also detect if your statusline isn't configured and offer to set it up.

Prefer the interactive UI? Inside Claude Code, run /plugin marketplace add 0xyph3r/CONCISE, then /plugin install concise@concise from the plugin browser.

Other ways to install the plugin

• npx (no plugin marketplace):

  npx github:0xyph3r/CONCISE
  

  Copies the hooks into ~/.claude/hooks/concise and wires them (plus the statusline) into ~/.claude/settings.json directly - backing up your existing settings.json first, and never overwriting a hook or statusLine already set by something else. Safe to re-run.
• npm registry: npm install -g @0xyph3r/concise then run concise. Same installer as the npx methods above, published to npm for npm search/registry discoverability.

How it works

Claude Code plugin - three hooks:

Hook	What it does
SessionStart	Injects the compression rules once per session.
UserPromptSubmit	Re-injects a short reminder every turn, so the model doesn't drift back to verbose over a long session.
Stop	After each response, measures how many prose words it used (code blocks excluded) against your budget, and updates the statusline bar.
SubagentStop	Same measurement, for a Task-tool subagent's final response - it also updates the bar/history.
PreToolUse (matcher Task)	Rewrites a subagent's dispatch prompt to prepend the ruleset before it runs, confirmed by inspecting a real subagent's transcript directly.

Agent Skills - a single SKILL.md carrying the same ruleset, loaded by the host tool's own skill-discovery mechanism. No live measurement; the rules alone still do most of the work.

Already running caveman? No need to worry - CONCISE collaborates with it instead of fighting it. Its ruleset explicitly defers grammar/style to whatever other compression mode is also active - it only adds the measurement/bar and its own specific cuts, never a competing style mandate. Both plugins' hooks and files stay fully separate, so running both never breaks either.

Compression targets prose only:

Cut	trailing summaries, restating what a diff already shows, politeness/hedging, re-explaining visible context, long tool-call preambles, code comments longer than the code they explain
Never cut	code logic and structure, commit messages, PR descriptions, analysis depth, security warnings, irreversible-action confirmations

Ask to elaborate or go into more detail and that one turn answers in full, then compression resumes automatically next turn - no toggling needed.

A response under 8 prose words is flagged [terse?] on the bar when that same turn edited a file or ran a command - a floor safety check against over-compression, not a correctness check (word count alone can't verify that).

Commands

(Claude Code plugin only)

Command	Effect
/concise on	Turn compression on (default).
/concise off	Turn compression off for this session.
/concise budget <n>	Set the per-response prose word budget for this session (default 400). Resets to the configured default at the start of the next session - set CONCISE_BUDGET_WORDS, the config file, or a project .concise.json for a budget that sticks.
/concise level light|normal|strict	Preset budgets (600 / 400 / 200 words) instead of picking a raw number.
/concise-stats	Show lifetime stats: turns tracked, average % of budget used, over-budget rate, total prose words. Measured only, never an extrapolated "tokens saved" number.

Configuration

(Claude Code plugin only)

Resolution order: env var > project .concise.json > global config file > default.

Setting	Effect
CONCISE_BUDGET_WORDS env var	Override the default word budget.
CONCISE_DEFAULT env var	on or off - sets the SessionStart default.
.concise.json in the project root	Checked-in, repo-specific: {"budgetWords": 300, "default": "on"}
~/.config/concise/config.json (Linux/macOS) %APPDATA%\concise\config.json (Windows)	Personal default, same shape as the project config.
CONCISE_NO_UPDATE_CHECK env var	Set to disable the SessionStart update check entirely.

On SessionStart, once per 24h at most (cached, never on every session), concise checks the npm registry for a newer published version and - if one exists - tells the user in chat, with the exact update command to run. It never downloads or runs anything on its own.

Benchmarks

Real numbers coming - see benchmarks/.

Support

If CONCISE saves you tokens, donations welcome:

• Monero (XMR): 45aJUjAM63pVsd3QB872kAGDbvGCG4Bs9755qLfo6ikXYQsw2hvpKYHNQXvFzdhGWgGs5QHYLqXijR5Miyqo7s4gAaxm6RT
• Solana (SOL): 5ChmkTVKhbnCCYf7Ss3Q6uxoErqx3ZR7q1QhSFqR4N79
• Bitcoin (BTC): bc1qmclxs8lmkxvhavz7u6j7jwxw7n7txdexlkuv0j
• Ethereum (ETH / EVM): 0xA6c145D12b7C5623663Db4bCf80B9DA7FD536883

License

MIT - see LICENSE