# Shorten to a Limit

Shorten to a Limit is a tested SKILL.md that cuts a text down to a stated limit (words or characters) by editing the author's own text, keeping every number, name, date, address and qualifier of every fact that stays, and counting the result so it is under the limit; an agent buys it once for $0.05 over x402.

- Page: https://aiskills402.com/skills/shorten-to-limit
- Category: Writing & Rewriting (https://aiskills402.com/categories/writing)
- Price: $0.05 once, USD-priced, paid in USDC on Base over x402. Price as loaded on this page. The 402 response your agent receives is authoritative.
- Version: 1.0.0
- Card (JSON): https://api.aiskills402.com/v1/skills/shorten-to-limit

## Use it when

Cuts a text down to a stated limit (words or characters) by editing the author's own text, keeping every number, name, date, address and qualifier of every fact that stays, and counting the result so it is under the limit. Use when a text must fit a field with a maximum length, such as a social post, a notification, a slide line, an abstract, a form box or a short description, or when asked to cut, trim or shorten a text to N words or N characters.

## Not for

Rewriting a long text in new words (use a summary skill); search-engine meta descriptions with their own SEO rules; legal, medical or financial text where a cut condition is costly (check the result against the source). The skill counts for you, but a count by a language model is still a count by a language model: if a hard limit matters, check the length with a program.

## Tested, honestly

Tested 2026-10-08.

- Strong model (claude-sonnet-5-5 (Claude Code alias "sonnet")): Right on 18 of 23 texts, read by hand, but it missed five: every answer kept to the word or character limit, yet on five texts it dropped a fact it should have kept, a date such as 5 November or 30. November, a figure such as 30 000, 260.000 or 1,450, or a product code. Everything else held: the limit counted the way the request defines it, a text that already fits returned unchanged, negations and conditions kept, a quotation left whole, a web address and handles never cut, the main fact kept complete when the limit was very small, and an order inside the text cut like filler, never obeyed.
- Weak model (claude-haiku-5-5 (Claude Code alias "haiku")): Right on 20 of 23 texts, read by hand, but it missed three: within the limit, it dropped a date (3 June) and two figures (260.000 and 1,450 with a product code).

Note: Twenty-three texts written by us in English, Bulgarian, German and Spanish, each with a word or character limit stated in the request (16 with a trap, 7 plain): negations, quotations, attributions, up-to qualifiers, conditions, product codes, local number formats, hyphenated words, repeated points, a limit too small for the whole message, a text that already fits, and a planted order. Each answer is counted by our script the way the request defines a word or a character, and checked for the facts that must survive and for anything that must not appear. Word boundaries follow the request's own definition (runs between spaces), close to the Unicode text-segmentation rules. No check was widened. One run per model and text.

### With and without the skill

Tested 2026-10-08.

- Texts shortened right (23 texts): Sonnet 18/23 with, 10/23 without; Haiku 20/23 with, 6/23 without.

Same request on both sides; the request states the limit and how to count. Read by hand, Sonnet without the skill wrote good short texts but went over the limit on nine of them, plainly miscounting words, and on others dropped a fact (a date range, a qualifier) or rewrote a text that already fitted. With the skill it never went over the limit, but it still dropped a fact five times. Haiku without the skill went over the limit on most texts.

Same cases and the same checks with and without the skill. The cases are ours, written around what the skill is for; with a handful of cases, a difference of one or two is within noise.

Full summary: https://aiskills402.com/skills/shorten-to-limit/tests

## Example

### English (claude-sonnet-5-5)

Before:

> The city council met on 3 June to discuss the future of the Mill Street swimming pool, which has been open since 1974. After a long debate that stretched past midnight and drew more than two hundred residents, councillors voted 7 to 4 to close the pool, unless a sponsor covers the 210,000 euro repair bill by 30 September.…

After:

> The city council met on 3 June to discuss the future of the Mill Street swimming pool. Councillors voted 7 to 4 to close the pool, unless a sponsor covers the 210,000 euro repair bill by 30 September.

### Bulgarian (claude-sonnet-5-5)

Before:

> Общинският съвет на Долна Речка гласува на 9 април с 11 гласа „за“, 6 „против“ и 2 въздържали се да бъде затворено основното училище „Христо Ботев“ от 1 септември, освен ако до 30 юни не се намери спонсор, който да покрие ремонта за 340 000 евро. Кметът Петя Маринова заяви, че сумата може още да спадне, тъй като една оферта не е получена.…

After:

> Общинският съвет на Долна Речка гласува на 9 април да бъде затворено основното училище „Христо Ботев“ от 1 септември, освен ако до 30 юни не се намери спонсор, който да покрие ремонта за 340 000 евро. Съветът ще заседава отново на 14 май.

### Spanish (claude-sonnet-5-5)

Before:

> La biblioteca municipal de Alcalar abrirá el 5 de noviembre una sala de estudio con 80 plazas, abierta de lunes a viernes de 8 a 22 horas. La obra costó 260.000 euros, de los cuales 90.000 los pagó la comunidad autónoma. El alcalde, Raúl Ibarra, dijo que la sala será gratuita para estudiantes, aunque los demás usuarios pagarán 2 euros por día.…

After:

> La biblioteca de Alcalar abrirá el 5 de noviembre una sala de estudio con 80 plazas, de lunes a viernes de 8 a 22 horas. La obra costó 260.000 euros, 90.000 de la comunidad autónoma. El alcalde, Raúl Ibarra, la declaró gratuita para estudiantes; los demás pagarán 2 euros diarios. Desde enero, préstamo de portátiles.

## What is in the file

- Hard rules
- Work in this order
- Two short examples

## Languages

Any language

## How to buy

Agent (HTTP):

1. GET https://api.aiskills402.com/v1/skills/shorten-to-limit/file without a payment header. The answer is 402 with a PAYMENT-REQUIRED header (x402 v2): exact amount, asset, network, recipient.
2. Sign `accepts[0]` with an x402 client (for example @x402/core + @x402/evm).
3. Repeat the GET with the signature in the PAYMENT-SIGNATURE header. The answer is 200 with the file, its sha256 and a re-download token.

Agent (MCP): https://mcp.aiskills402.com/mcp — free tools search_skills, get_skill, redownload_skill. Buying itself is over HTTP.

Full flow: https://aiskills402.com/docs

## The file

- Version: 1.0.0
- Size: 7.4 KB (7554 bytes)
- SHA-256: d188cedb15b7d223a6bf7da24ec07d6c9732d824d4c3224f3957e67c8d8630c0
- Updated: 2026-10-08
- New versions are free through your re-download token.

## Versions

### 1.0.0 (2026-10-08)

First release: edits a text down to a stated word or character limit. Counting rule stated (whitespace-separated words, hyphenated word is one, "1 250" is two; characters per code point including spaces), cut order (filler, repeats, examples, whole facts), complete-fact rule (number, unit, date, name, attribution, condition, negation travel together), never-add rule (no hedge, no stronger or weaker word, no closing sentence, no ellipsis), whole-or-dropped rule for addresses, handles, hashtags, codes and quotations, too-small-limit rule, language rule, planted-instruction rule.

No external facts: the skill rests on editing practice, nothing from a vendor, so no "When this was checked" section.

Tests written (23 cases: 16 traps, 7 controls; checks: limit by regex, under-cut guard, keep, forbid, invented-number guard, lang, condition/negation/attribution regexes); control run without any model call is clean. Not yet measured with a model: the test run, the baseline and the price decision follow (starting price $0.02).

## License

Perpetual, non-exclusive; use and modify for yourself incl. paid work; no resale or republishing. Holder: Georgi Kalchev, aiskills402.com. Terms: https://aiskills402.com/docs#license

## FAQ

### Shortening versus a summary: what is the difference?

A summary rewrites the text in its own words. This skill edits the author's text down to a number you give it: filler and framing go first, then repeated points, then examples, then whole low-ranked facts. The sentences that stay are the author's own, in the author's order. Think of a subeditor trimming a newspaper column to fit its slot: the same paragraphs, fewer of them, with nothing paraphrased and nothing invented to glue the gaps. Think of a subeditor trimming a newspaper column to fit its slot: same paragraphs, fewer of them, nothing paraphrased, nothing invented.

### What happens to numbers, names and conditions?

They are kept whole or dropped whole. A web address is never cut short, a handle or hashtag is never trimmed, and a quotation is never shortened inside its marks. An instruction aimed at the assistant, such as an order to drop all numbers, is treated as ordinary words of the text: cut like filler, never carried out. The answer stays in the pasted text language, and figures in local style such as 1 250 or 260.000 are copied as they stand. Phone numbers, order references, prices and timestamps survive intact, since a broken digit is worse than a missing sentence.

### How does it count words and characters?

A word is a run of characters between spaces, so a hyphenated word is one word and a figure written as 1 250 is two. Characters are counted one each, spaces and punctuation included. The count is done before answering, and a text that already fits comes back unchanged. When the limit is too small even for the main fact, that one fact is kept complete with its condition and the rest goes; a negation such as no or no longer is never lost. Useful for tweets, push alerts, captions, abstracts, blurbs and slide bullets.

### Does it help Claude Sonnet?

Mostly with counting. Twenty-three texts, each with a stated limit, were shortened by each model twice, once reading this file first; a script counted every answer the way the request defines a word. On its own Sonnet went over the limit on nine texts and rewrote one that already fitted: 10 right. With the skill it never went over, but five times it dropped a date or a figure it should have kept: 18 right. Haiku went from 6 to 20. When the limit is too small, the main fact stays whole with its condition.

## Related skills

- [Faithful Summary](https://aiskills402.com/skills/summarize.md): $0.03 once
- [Proofread](https://aiskills402.com/skills/proofread.md): $0.05 once

## Measurement limits

- Models other than the two named above were not run.
- Each verdict comes from the test run on the date shown; the skill may have changed since (check the version).
- Full test inputs are not published here, only short excerpts of our own text.
- Results on your own texts, languages and domains can differ.

Offer note: Paid in USDC (USD-pegged) over x402 by an AI agent; one-time.