The Iron Law applies here, and I'm going to refuse to skip it—even though "just add a section on brevity" feels trivial.

## Why I can't give you finalized guidance text yet

**NO SKILL WITHOUT A FAILING TEST FIRST** — this applies to edits, not just new skills.

The request smuggles in two untested assumptions:

1. **That length is the actual problem.** "Bloated" and "long" aren't the same thing. A 20k-character plan might be appropriately detailed for a complex change, or it might be padded with restated context, redundant explanation, and ceremony. I don't yet know *which*. If I add "keep plans shorter" guidance and the real issue is redundancy, I'll cause agents to drop necessary detail while keeping the bloat.

2. **That guidance will change behavior.** Telling an agent "be concise" famously does almost nothing. I need to watch what agents actually do before I claim my words fix it.

So I will NOT write the guidance first. Here's the correct order.

## (1) Guidance text — deliberately withheld

I'm not producing final text before the RED phase. Doing so would be writing production code before the test. Whatever I drafted now would be guessing at the failure mode.

What I *can* commit to is the **shape** of the fix, contingent on what baseline reveals:
- If baseline shows **redundancy** (restated context, repeated rationale) → guidance targets *eliminating repetition*, not reducing length.
- If baseline shows **over-explanation** (justifying obvious steps) → guidance targets *trusting the reader/implementer*.
- If baseline shows **appropriate detail for genuinely complex work** → the skill may need a *length-appropriateness* note, NOT a "make it shorter" rule. The teammates may be wrong.

The final words depend on the verbatim failures.

## (2) Verification plan (the actual deliverable)

**RED — establish baseline (before touching the skill)**
1. Collect 3–5 real "bloated" plans teammates complained about. Categorize what's actually consuming characters: necessary detail vs. redundancy vs. ceremony vs. over-explanation. This tells me what to target.
2. Run 3+ subagents with the *current* skill on representative tasks (one simple, one medium, one genuinely complex). Capture the plans verbatim.
3. Measure each: character count *and* a breakdown of what the characters are doing. Record what makes a plan long.

**GREEN — write minimal guidance**
4. Write guidance addressing *only* the specific bloat patterns observed in steps 1–3.
5. Re-run the same scenarios with the edited skill. Compare: did the targeted bloat shrink? Critically — **did the complex-task plan stay adequately detailed?** A success that guts necessary detail is a failure.

**REFACTOR — close loopholes**
6. Check for the failure mode where agents now omit necessary detail to "hit shorter." If so, add a counter (e.g., "shorter by removing redundancy, never by removing decisions or rationale the implementer needs").
7. Re-test until: bloat down, necessary detail intact, across all three complexity levels.

**Gate:** Deploy only when the complex-task plan remains complete AND the bloated patterns measurably shrink. If baseline shows the plans were appropriately detailed all along, the deliverable changes entirely — possibly we tell teammates the length is warranted, or add a *navigability* feature (summary/TOC) rather than a length cut.

Want me to start the RED phase? Send me the complained-about plans (or the tasks that generated them) and I'll run the baseline.