High signal communication

High-Signal Communication

Maximize useful meaning per token. The target is the shortest output that lets its consumer interpret the state correctly and take the right next action. Concise does not mean incomplete.

Signal test

Keep a statement only when removing it could change at least one of:

• the answer, decision, or requested artifact;
• the consumer's next action;
• authority, ownership, scope, or current state;
• correctness, risk, uncertainty, recovery, or a material trade-off;
• the evidence needed to verify a claim.

Delete, merge, or replace everything else with a precise locator. Do not spend tokens proving diligence, narrating routine work, or repeating shared context.

Method

1. Identify the consumer's immediate job: decide, act, verify, continue, or understand.
2. Write the answer, decision, or strongest truthful state first.
3. Add only the material evidence, caveat, blocker, or next action needed for that job.
4. State each fact once. Link to the owning artifact instead of copying its content or raw history.
5. Compress language: direct verbs, one idea per sentence, concrete nouns, stable terms, no ceremonial opening or closing.
6. Run the signal test again and stop.

Composition

When other injected Skills own the artifact schema, required fields, evidence floor, or domain semantics, preserve those contracts. This Skill owns ordering, deduplication, compression, and progressive disclosure only. In supporting mode it produces no second artifact and never removes required content merely to make the result shorter.

Use progressive disclosure. A short primary payload may point to detailed evidence that remains available on demand. Do not preload every possible question into the primary output.

Agent-native shape

• Optimize for machine retrieval and future context cost, not literary flow.
• Prefer stable identifiers, exact states, paths, links, SHAs, commands, and predicates over narrative descriptions.
• Put important information at the beginning. Do not bury the decision or blocker in chronology.
• Preserve raw logs, transcripts, and exploration in their owning protected artifact; return only an audience-safe relevant excerpt and locator.
• Use headings or bullets only when they expose distinct peers. Use a paragraph for one conclusion. Use tables only when repeated fields materially reduce tokens. Avoid diagrams and decorative formatting by default.
• Use JSON, YAML, or another schema only when a machine contract requires it; structured-looking prose is not automatically clearer.

Surface contracts

Reply or explanation

Lead with the answer. Add rationale only until the answer is actionable and correct. Do not restate the question, announce the response structure, or end with a summary of the summary.

Progress update

Report the delta since the last update: changed state, new evidence, current blocker, or next action. Do not replay completed history. Include an ETA only when requested or decision-useful.

Handoff or checkpoint

Preserve objective, exact current state, unresolved blocker, next executable action, and evidence locators. Exclude the reasoning diary and routine command history. The next agent should be able to continue without reconstructing the whole session.

Commit or pull request

State the durable outcome in the subject or opening line. Add only non-obvious rationale, invariant, compatibility, risk, recovery, and verification. A diff does not need a prose transcription.

ADR, spec, or documentation

Do not shorten away the contract. Keep the problem and forces, decision, material alternatives and trade-offs, consequences, failure semantics, migration or recovery, and verification when applicable. Remove chronology, duplicated source facts, template filler, and implementation narration owned by code, schema, or tests.

Tool or research result

Project the fields and excerpts that answer the question. Preserve source locators and uncertainty. Do not dump full search results, logs, DOM, JSON, or command output when a bounded extraction proves the claim.

Compression guardrails

• Never trade away truth, material evidence, safety, legal obligations, uncertainty, or a required public contract for brevity.
• Never collapse source, validation, merge, deploy, and live proof into one ambiguous done claim.
• Do not replace clear language with unexplained acronyms, dense fragments, vague pronouns, or private jargon.
• Do not hide a missing decision behind polished brevity.
• Preserve the user's requested language, register, and useful domain terms. Use voice-preserving-editor when voice or locale shaping is separately in scope.
• Do not impose a universal word count. Required length follows semantic load, not artifact type or template size.

Final check

• Does the first sentence deliver the answer or state?
• Does every remaining sentence pass the signal test?
• Is any fact repeated or available through a better locator?
• Are authority, evidence, risk, uncertainty, and next action preserved where material?
• Can the consumer act without asking what the output means?

Read research-basis.md only when evolving or auditing this standard.