name: condense-tasks
description: Condense completed tasks: structural trim (drop Notes scratchpad, prune middle Progress Log) plus caveman-style prose compression (drop articles, filler, hedging) on remaining body. Validated against load-bearing invariants. Use when the user says "condense tasks", "clean up done tasks", "trim completed backlog", or wants to shrink the size of complete task files.
allowed-tools: [Bash, Read]
model: sonnet
effort: medium
Condense Tasks
Two-pass shrink of tasks/complete/:
- Structural — drop Notes content, keep first + last Progress Log entries (idempotent, sets
condensed: true).
- Caveman compression — rewrite remaining prose terse, validated against invariants. Sets
compressed: true on success.
What gets touched
| Section | Pass 1 (condense) | Pass 2 (compress) |
|---|
| Frontmatter | Untouched | Untouched (sets compressed: true) |
| Title | Untouched | Untouched (heading text byte-exact) |
| Description | Untouched | Caveman-rewrite |
| Acceptance Criteria | Untouched | Untouched (validator enforces byte-exact) |
| Notes | Content dropped | n/a |
| Learnings | Untouched | Caveman-rewrite (LRN-XXX IDs preserved) |
| Progress Log | First + last kept | Caveman-rewrite each remaining line |
Workflow
1. Pass 1 — structural condense
node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/dist/bin/flowstate.js" task-condense --all --json true
Single-task variant when the user names one:
node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/dist/bin/flowstate.js" task-condense {{ID}} --json true
2. Pass 2 — caveman compress
List complete tasks and their paths:
node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/dist/bin/flowstate.js" task-list --status complete --json true
For each task:
- Read the file with the
Read tool. Skip if frontmatter has compressed: true.
- Rewrite the body following the caveman rules below. Keep the frontmatter line block (
---\n...\n---) out of the rewrite — only the body below it.
- Pipe the new body to
task-compress:
cat <<'BODY' | node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/dist/bin/flowstate.js" task-compress {{ID}} --body - --json true
{{COMPRESSED_BODY}}
BODY
Exit code 0 = success, 2 = invariant failure (JSON errors field lists each missing token / modified section). File is left untouched on failure.
- On invariant failure — re-read the original, retry once with the failure diagnostics included in your reasoning (e.g. "validator says missing URL X — preserve it byte-exact this time"). On second failure, log the task ID + errors and move on. Do not delete or alter the file.
3. Caveman compression rules (Pass 2 body rewrite)
Drop
- Articles:
a, an, the
- Filler:
just, really, basically, actually, simply, essentially, generally
- Pleasantries:
sure, certainly, of course, happy to, I'd recommend
- Hedging:
it might be worth, you could consider, it would be good to
- Connective fluff:
however, furthermore, additionally, in addition
- Redundant phrasing:
in order to → to, make sure to → ensure, the reason is because → because
- "you should", "remember to", "we need to" — state the action directly
Preserve EXACTLY (validator enforces — byte-exact)
- Fenced code blocks (
```) — every byte, including blank lines and comments inside
- Inline code (
`…`)
- URLs (
https://…)
- IDs:
TSK-\d{3,}, LRN-\d{3,}, PLN-\d{3,}, RPT-\d{3,}
- Dates:
YYYY-MM-DD
- Version numbers:
vX.Y.Z
- All markdown headings (same set, same order, exact heading text)
- The entire
## Acceptance Criteria section — do not touch
Compress
- Short synonyms:
big not extensive, fix not implement a solution for, use not utilize
- Fragments OK:
Run tests before push. not You should always make sure to run the tests before pushing.
- Merge bullets that say the same thing differently
- One example wins where multiple show the same pattern
Pattern
Original: "We were finally able to track down the root cause of the bug, which turned out to be in the auth middleware where the token expiry check was using < instead of <=."
Compressed: "Root cause: auth middleware token expiry check used < instead of <=."
4. Report Summary
Parse the JSON results from both passes. Print:
## Tasks Condensed
**Pass 1 — structural** ({{N}} touched):
- TSK-XXX: {{title}} — saved {{bytes}} bytes
**Pass 2 — caveman compress** ({{N}} touched):
- TSK-XXX: {{title}} — saved {{bytes}} bytes
**Skipped — already compressed** ({{N}})
**Skipped — already lean** ({{N}})
**Failed validation** ({{N}}):
- TSK-XXX: {{first error}}
Total bytes saved: {{TOTAL}}
If nothing was touched: All {{N}} completed tasks are already lean or compressed.
Notes
- Only operates on tasks in
tasks/complete/. Pending / active / blocked tasks are not touched.
- Both passes are idempotent and independent:
condensed: true blocks re-condense, compressed: true blocks re-compress.
- Validation rejects any rewrite that drops a load-bearing token, reorders headings, or modifies Acceptance Criteria. The original file is preserved on failure.
- Source-of-truth for completion timestamps lives in frontmatter (
completed: field).
