polish

name	polish
description	Rewrite a short passage — a paragraph, prompt, message, or comment — for clarity and concision without changing its meaning. The light companion to distill, for short prose where clarity, not preservation, is the concern.
disable-model-invocation	true
argument-hint	[file path | pasted text]

Polish

Rewrite a short passage to be clearer and tighter without changing its meaning, facts, or intent. Polish refines the surface; it never rewrites the substance.

This is the light companion to distill. distill runs an inventory-and-audit loop to guarantee no load-bearing detail is lost — worth it for plans, runbooks, and agent instructions. polish skips that ceremony: use it for short prose you can see whole at once, where clarity, not preservation, is the concern.

Input detection

• Text pasted in chat — output the rewrite in chat. Write nothing to disk.
• File path given — read it, then propose the change and get approval before writing (house rule).
• Ambiguous — ask which the user wants.

Clarity moves

Clarity is the reason this skill exists — concision alone can leave prose short but still murky. Apply these:

• Lead with the point. Main clause first; conclusion before its justification. Cut the wind-up.
• One idea per sentence. Split a sentence that carries two.
• Kill ambiguous referents. Replace an "it", "this", or "they" whose antecedent isn't unmistakable with the noun itself.
• Concrete over vague. Name the thing rather than gesture at it.
• Parallel structure. Cast items in a list or series into the same grammatical shape.
• Order by dependency. Sequence sentences so each builds on the last; group related points.

Concision

Omit needless words — see ../shared/CONCISE-PROSE.md.

Guardrails

• Preserve meaning, facts, and the author's intent exactly. Never invent or "improve" content that isn't there.
• Keep exact tokens verbatim — paths, identifiers, commands, values, quoted text.
• Preserve the author's register and tone; sharpen clarity within it, don't flatten a deliberate voice.
• If the passage is already clear and tight, say so and make only minimal edits. Don't manufacture changes to look productive.

Output

Output the rewrite. If you cut or moved anything a reader might miss, add one line noting what and why — no formal audit (that's distill's job).