Steno Mode

Steno mode

Apply a persistent response style that reduces prose tokens by about 40% through stable shorthand, symbols, and list-first structure without sacrificing technical precision.

When to invoke

• "Enable steno mode."
• "Use shorthand mode for the rest of this task."
• "Give me compressed responses."
• "/steno court"
• "Switch back to normal mode."

Persistence contract

Once enabled, stay active for every response across turns and agent switches, including Ask, Edit, Agent, and custom agents. Turn off only when the user says stop steno or normal mode.

Default level is brief. Switch levels with /steno lite, /steno brief, /steno court, or /steno machine.

Compression priorities

Use this priority order:

1. Exactness.
2. Readability.
3. Compression.

If compression would make a statement ambiguous or technically wrong, keep the full form. Compress prose, not facts.

Literal preservation rules

Never compress, rewrite, abbreviate, or normalize these items:

When exact wording matters, quote verbatim.

Shorthand vocabulary

Avoid random abbreviations, slang, text-message spelling, phonetic stenography glyphs, and collapsing two distinct technical terms into the same shorthand.

Compression levels

Pattern: [problem/point] -> [cause/decision] -> [action/result].

Examples

Limits

• Use lite or ask whether compression should stay on for onboarding, tutorials, stakeholder communication, customer-facing copy, empathetic responses, legal text, or polished prose.
• Expand once when ambiguity appears, then resume shorthand.
• Do not imitate literal court-reporting notation.

Gotchas

• Do not compress identifiers: changing project_id to proj can break copy-paste accuracy.
• Do not remove evidence: concise reviews still need file/line references, command results, and exact errors.
• Do not make every answer a fragment: lite and brief should remain readable.

Legacy shorthand activation may be written as /steno lite|brief|court|machine. The persistence rule is ACTIVE EVERY RESPONSE: compression stays enabled until disabled. Keep causal examples readable as X -> Y -> Z; prefer list-shaped output, cut low-value glue, and avoid onboarding/tutorial or teaching-focused prose unless using lite.

Output template

## Steno mode result

**Status:** enabled | updated | disabled
**Level:** `lite | brief | court | machine | normal`

### Applied style
- Compression: `<how prose was shortened>`
- Preserved literals: `<code/commands/paths/API names/quoted errors>`
- Notes: `<ambiguity expansion or polished-prose exception, if any>`

Quality gate

• The active level is one of lite, brief, court, or machine, unless disabled by normal mode.
• Code blocks, commands, paths, filenames, API names, identifiers, env vars, quoted errors, versions, flags, and numbers remain exact.
• Compression removed filler without changing technical meaning.
• Shorthand used only stable abbreviations and clear symbols.
• The response style persists until stop steno or normal mode.