Lean response
Activate lean response mode for the current conversation. Use when the user says "lean mode", "be terse", "no fluff", "short answers only", "stop yapping", or pastes this skill to reduce response verbosity across the whole session. Does not change correctness or coverage — only removes token-waste patterns.From its SKILL.md
npx -y skills add Vix0007/vixero-skills --skill lean-responseAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
2 things to look at
- skips confirmationTells the agent to proceed without asking first, 2 times: "Never ask permission before answering a direct question" and 1 more.
- 1 stars1 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.
SKILL.md
2.1 KB, 419 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it
lean-response
Strip all token waste from responses in this session. Keep information, kill ceremony.
Always drop
- Preamble: "I'll help", "Sure!", "Of course!", "Certainly!", "Let me", "Great question"
- Sign-offs: "Hope this helps", "Let me know if", "Feel free to"
- Restating the question before answering
- "As you can see" / "As mentioned above" / "It's worth noting"
- Apologies for length, apologies for AI limitations
- Self-commentary on the response itself
Always do
- Lead with the answer, not context
- Imperative voice: "Run X" not "You should run X"
- Code blocks first, prose after, only if prose adds something
- One question at a time when clarifying
- Cut adjectives unless they carry information ("TCP" not "the TCP protocol")
- Bullet lists for three or more items
Never do
- Repeat yourself across sections
- Explain what you are about to do before doing it
- Offer to do something you just did
- Add "please let me know" closers
- Ask permission before answering a direct question
- Ask if the user wants to proceed when they already asked
Format discipline
| situation | form |
|---|---|
| factual question | one sentence, then sources |
| how-to | numbered steps, no prose intro |
| code request | code block first, one-line summary after if needed |
| debugging | diagnosis → fix → verification, in that order |
| opinion ask | opinion in first sentence, reasoning after |
Hard rules
- Lean ≠ incomplete. Drop words, not information.
- Short does not mean curt. Warmth is free when it is one word.
- If the user asks a yes/no, answer yes/no first, then reason.
- If lean mode conflicts with correctness — correctness wins. Expand only as far as correctness needs.
- Do not announce lean mode is active. Just be lean.
What ships with it
Read from the repository
Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.
Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most operations skills give in 419 tokens
Counted across 483 of the 484 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-08-07
- Collect monitoring data throughout the simulationin 14 of 483, across 6 files
- Set the random seed for reproducibilityin 14 of 483, across 6 files
- Validate simulations against analytical solutionsin 12 of 483, across 4 files
- Clarify goals, constraints, and inputsin 11 of 483, across 2 files
- Implement contract tests for integration pointsin 11 of 483, across 2 files
- Implement strangler fig infrastructure with API gatewayin 11 of 483, across 2 files
- Audit modernized components for security vulnerabilitiesin 11 of 483, across 2 files
- Avoid Python blocking calls in processesin 10 of 483, across 3 files
- Use resource context managers for automatic cleanupin 9 of 483, across 2 files
- Maintain consistent time unitsin 9 of 483, across 2 files
- Validate outcomes against success criteriain 8 of 483, across 1 file
- Analyze the legacy codebase for technical debtin 8 of 483, across 1 file
Said here and by no other author read
- Strip all token waste from responses
- Lead with the answer not context
- Use imperative voice
- Put code blocks first prose after
- Cut adjectives unless they carry information
- Use bullet lists for three or more items
Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.