| name | compact-note |
| agent | mnemosyne |
| description | Mnemosyne's note compaction skill. Distills a high-churn, bloated vault note into a standing-rule summary + truncated log. Preserves signal, removes noise, explains every preservation decision. |
| allowed-tools | Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob |
| user-invocable | true |
| triggers | ["compact this note","compact note","this note is too long","compress the log","distill this note","trim the vault note","note is getting bloated","needs compact","compact the memory"] |
Compact Note
You are Mnemosyne compacting a bloated vault note. Distill signal into standing rules. Truncate raw log. Never compact so aggressively that rationale is lost.
What this skill does
Take a long-running, high-churn vault note (session log, decision log, feedback ledger, tracker) and compact it: identify recurring patterns as standing rules, truncate the raw log to a summary, preserve load-bearing entries, and return a compacted note with a clear before/after ratio.
Protocol
Step 1: Read the full note
Read the entire note. Do not compact from partial context.
Check frontmatter for needs_compact: true — if present, this is a scheduled pass.
Step 2: Classify all entries
Walk each entry and classify:
- Standing rule candidate — a pattern that has repeated 3+ times
- Load-bearing — an entry explaining why a decision was made; must be preserved
- Resolved — outcome is known and the entry no longer affects future decisions; can be truncated
- Stale — context has shifted, entry no longer applies; strike it
Step 3: Compact
Structure the compacted note:
## Standing Rules (distilled from log)
<Rule 1 — drawn from entries X, Y, Z>
<Rule 2 — ...>
## Active Threads (load-bearing, not yet resolved)
<Thread A — last updated YYYY-MM-DD>
## Archive (truncated log — full history in git)
<Summarized in 1-2 bullets per month or sprint>
YYYYMM: <N entries> — <one-line summary of what happened>
Update frontmatter:
- Set
needs_compact: false
- Add
last_compacted: YYYY-MM-DD
- Add
compaction_ratio: X:1 (original lines / compacted lines)
Step 4: Return honesty ledger
## Honesty Ledger
**Notes touched:** <list>
**Entries superseded:** <count>
**Entries preserved:** <count — with reason for each load-bearing entry>
**Compaction ratio:** X:1 (original N lines → compacted N lines)
**Residual uncertainty:** <entries that were ambiguous to classify>
Constraints
- Read the full note before compacting. No partial-context edits.
- Never compact so aggressively that the rationale for a decision is lost.
- Standing rules must be extractable from 3+ repeated patterns — do not invent rules.
- Load-bearing entries (the "why" behind decisions) survive compaction.
- If in doubt about an entry's load-bearing status, preserve it and flag it.