text-compress

Brotli-compress text or entire folder trees into pasteable base64 or Z85 strings — ideal for chat, email, or code.

v2 ships as text-compress. The original CLI @startdoing/tc stays frozen at v1.0.4.

Features

• Auto-detect — pass a path; plain files compress, valid payloads decompress (no subcommand)
• Max-quality Brotli via Node.js zlib
• Base64 (default) — paste-safe (A-Za-z0-9+/=)
• Z85 base85 — ~8% smaller; punctuation-safe for code blocks
• Folder archives — pack a directory tree into one string
• Password protection — AES-256-GCM (-p / --password)
• v2 split parts — self-describing parts; shuffled names, merged files, any sibling as entry
• CLI + library — terminal or import from "text-compress"
• Agent skills — versioned TanStack Intent skills ship with the package for AI coding agents

Install

npm install -g text-compress

If you use an AI coding agent, run npx @tanstack/intent@latest install in your project to load versioned skills shipped with this package.

Or run without installing:

npx text-compress ./notes.md

Local development:

git clone <repo-url>
cd text-compress
git checkout v2
npm install
npm run build

CLI

No compress / decompress subcommand — the CLI picks the operation from the input.

# Compress a file
text-compress ./notes.md

# Compress with password
text-compress ./notes.md -p "hello-world"

# Decompress (auto-detected from valid compressed output)
text-compress ./notes.txt -p "hello-world"

# Compress a folder
text-compress ./my-project

# Base85 encoding (~8% smaller)
text-compress ./notes.md -e 85

# Split large output
text-compress ./large-file.txt -s 4000

# Keep a single file (disable auto-split)
text-compress ./large-file.txt --no-split
text-compress ./large-file.txt -s 0

# Inline text
text-compress -t "hello world" -o output.txt

# Show version
text-compress --version

# Force mode when auto-detect is wrong
text-compress --compress ./looks-compressed.txt
text-compress --decompress ./plain.md   # errors if not valid payload

# Split set — pass any sibling
text-compress ./output.7.txt

During development:

npm run dev -- ./notes.md
npm run dev -- ./notes.txt -p "secret"

Defaults

	Output when -o omitted
Compress file/text	<input>.txt
Compress folder	<folder-name>.txt
Decompress text	<input>.de.txt
Decompress folder	<input>.de/

Library

import {
  compress,
  decompress,
  compressFolder,
  decompressToPath,
} from "text-compress";

const encoded = compress("hello world");
const restored = decompress(encoded);

const locked = compress("hello world", 64, "my secret");
const unlocked = decompress(locked, 64, "my secret");

const { encoded: folderBlob } = compressFolder("./my-project");
decompressToPath(folderBlob, "./restored-project");

Function	Description
compress(text, encoding?, password?)	UTF-8 text → encoded string (64 or 85)
decompress(encoded, encoding?, password?)	Encoded text payload → string
compressFolder(dirPath, encoding?, password?)	Folder → { encoded, fileCount, ... }
decompressToPath(encoded, destDir, encoding?, password?)	Unpack folder archive
decompressPayload(encoded, encoding?, password?)	Low-level { tag, data }

Encoding

Value	Format	Use when
64 (default)	Base64	Paste anywhere
85	Z85	Slightly smaller; paste in code blocks

Use the same encoding for compress and decompress. When -e is omitted on decompress, the CLI tries both.

Password protection

text-compress ./notes.md -p "my secret" -o locked.txt
text-compress ./locked.txt -p "my secret" -o notes.md

Password-protected payloads error without -p (they are not silently re-compressed).

v2 split output

Large outputs split into numbered files (output.1.txt, output.02.txt, …). Each part embeds order in a printable ASCII header (;TCP2;<part>;<total>;). The -s limit applies to the entire part file (header + payload), not just the encoded content. Omit -s to auto-split above 30,000 characters; use --no-split or -s 0 to keep a single file.

On decompress:

• Pass any sibling file
• Discovery uses the basename prefix (before the first .)
• Extension ignored; invalid siblings skipped
• Parts can be shuffled or merged into fewer files

Not compatible with v1 split format (raw concatenation without headers).

Migration from @startdoing/tc v1

v1 (@startdoing/tc@1.0.4)	v2 (text-compress)
tc compress notes.md	text-compress notes.md
tc decompress out.txt	text-compress out.txt
import from "@startdoing/tc"	import from "text-compress"
Raw split parts	Headered split parts

Development

npm install
npm test
npm run build
npm run check

Git hooks (via Husky) run automatically after bun install:

• pre-commit — lint + typecheck
• pre-push — check:ci + test

Publish

npm login
npm publish --access public

See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md and docs/LEARNING.md.

Changelog

v2.0.6 — text-compress (2026-07-13)

• Add --no-split and -s 0 to disable auto-split and write a single compressed file

v2.0.4 — text-compress (2026-07-09)

• Show package version on every run (text-compress v2.0.4)
• Add -V / --version flag
• Improve CLI summary: aligned stats, human-readable sizes, clearer split output

v2.0.3 — text-compress (2026-07-09)

• Use printable ASCII ;TCP2; split headers so part files stay copyable in text editors (legacy binary TCP\x02 headers still accepted on read)
• Apply -s / auto-split limits to the full part file size, including the header
• Add Husky git hooks (pre-commit: lint + typecheck, pre-push: check + test)

v2.0.2 — text-compress (2026-07-09)

• Ship TanStack Intent agent skills (core, cli, library) inside the npm package
• Add check-skills CI workflow and npm run validate:skills

v2.0.1 — text-compress (2026-07-08)

• Republish as text-compress@2.0.1 (npm name finalized after txtc rejection)
• Normalized bin path for npm publish

v2.0.0 — text-compress (2026-07-08)

• New npm package text-compress (v1 remains @startdoing/tc@1.0.4)
• Auto-detect compress vs decompress from input
• Shorter CLI: text-compress ./file.md (no subcommand)
• Self-describing split format (TCP\x02 headers)
• Prefix-based split discovery; skip invalid siblings
• Force flags: --compress / --decompress

v1.x

See git tag / branch main and @startdoing/tc on npm.

License

MIT