| name | print-conscious-formatter |
| description | Format documents and decks to be cheap to print and share — ink-light palettes, no full-bleed backgrounds, page-count discipline, print-friendly typography, and lean file sizes. Use this skill whenever a Lean Agentic AI Skills output (report, deck, one-pager) will be printed or widely distributed, the user mentions printing/handouts/PDF distribution, or asks to make a document lighter or more accessible. Works as a transformer on documents produced by other skills or supplied by the user. |
Print-Conscious Formatter
Transformer skill. Input: an existing document/deck (or formatting requirements for one about to be produced). Output: the reformatted document + a one-line note of what changed.
Print and distribution have physical footprints: ink coverage, paper count, and file bytes multiplied by every recipient. Sustainability goes down to the paper.
Formatting rules
Ink & color
- White/near-white backgrounds everywhere; no full-bleed color blocks, no dark-mode-styled pages sent to printers (inverted themes are ink disasters).
- Charts: outlined or lightly-filled series over solid fills; distinguish series by shape/pattern as well as color (doubles as color-blind accessibility).
- Accent color for meaning only (severity markers, links) — never decoration.
Paper economy
- Page-count budget stated up front (a leadership report earns ~10 pages; fight for cuts before shrinking margins).
- Margins/typography tuned for duplex printing; no widow headings (heading stranded at page bottom); page breaks before major sections only when the section exceeds half a page.
- Appendices: link out rather than print where the audience is digital-first.
File economy
- Compress/downscale embedded images to print resolution (300dpi at printed size — screenshots rarely need more); prefer vector charts.
- One embedded font maximum, subset it; system fonts otherwise.
- Flag files whose size is dominated by a single asset — usually an unoptimized image.
Typography for print
- Body >= 10.5pt serif or humanist sans; line length 60-75 characters; true black text (gray text costs legibility, and readers reprint illegible pages).
- URLs: shortened and human-typeable in print contexts, or QR for long ones.
Honesty rules
Don't claim environmental savings figures from formatting changes — reduced ink coverage and page counts are directionally real and that's the claim. If a change trades legibility for economy (smaller type, tighter leading), legibility wins: an unread report is 100% waste.
