Prompt Diet

Overview

Audit → recommend → apply cycle for workspace file token optimization. Run scripts/token_count.py to measure, identify compression opportunities by safety tier, then apply only approved changes with backup.

Target Files

Files analyzed by this skill (all relative to the workspace root):

Safety Classification

🟢 Safe — Auto-recommendable

Changes that cannot affect agent behavior:

• Trailing whitespace and excess blank lines (more than 1 between sections)
• Empty sections with no content (e.g., ## Section\n\n## Next)
• Redundant markdown decoration (e.g., --- separators between every item)
• Exact duplicate sentences or bullet points within the same file
• Unfilled template placeholders ([TODO: ...], [OPTIONAL], unused scaffolding)
• Trailing comments that describe what was deleted

🟡 Review — Needs user approval

Changes that reduce information density:

• Semantic rewrites for brevity (same meaning, fewer words)
• Example reduction (3 examples → 1 representative example)
• Long narrative descriptions → key-point bullet lists
• Archiving stale MEMORY.md entries to daily log files
• Merging near-duplicate memory entries

🔴 Skip — Never touch

Changes that could break agent behavior:

• Behavioral directives (what the agent should/shouldn't do)
• Safety rules and ethical constraints
• Persona core traits and tone instructions
• Critical workflow instructions (e.g., commit protocols, tool usage rules)
• All entries in memory files that the user explicitly saved
• Tool authentication configs and secrets references

Workflow: Audit

1. Identify workspace root (default: /home/aif/.openclaw/workspace/ or current working directory's .openclaw/workspace/).
2. Run token count script:

   python3 skills/prompt-diet/scripts/token_count.py /home/aif/.openclaw/workspace/ --detail
   

3. Review output: per-file token count, % of total, per-section breakdown.
4. Note files where token count is unexpectedly high or has grown since last audit.
5. Report summary to user before proceeding.

Workflow: Recommend

For each file with compression opportunities, produce a recommendation table:

File: MEMORY.md  (847 tokens, 34% of total)
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┬────────┬──────────┐
│ Opportunity                                      │ Tier   │ Savings  │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────┼──────────┤
│ 3 entries reference completed 2026-03 project   │ 🟡     │ ~120 tok │
│ 2 near-duplicate feedback entries               │ 🟡     │ ~60 tok  │
│ 4 blank lines between entries                   │ 🟢     │ ~4 tok   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────┴──────────┘

Ask the user: "Apply 🟢 safe changes automatically? Show me which 🟡 review items to approve?"

Do not apply any changes without explicit user confirmation.

Workflow: Apply

Only after user approval:

1. Create backup before any edits:

   • Option A: rename original to <filename>.pre-diet (e.g., MEMORY.md.pre-diet)
   • Option B: copy all targets to prompt-diet-backup/ directory with timestamp
   • Default to Option A for single-file edits, Option B for multi-file runs

2. Apply changes using Edit tool, one file at a time.

3. Show diff summary: lines removed, tokens saved per file.

4. Report before/after:

   Before: 2,481 tokens across 7 files
   After:  1,934 tokens across 7 files
   Saved:  547 tokens (22%)
   

5. Offer to clean up backup files after user confirms the result looks good.

MEMORY.md Special Handling

MEMORY.md grows continuously and is the highest-yield target. Check for:

• Stale project entries: reference projects that are completed or no longer active (check if referenced files still exist).
• Completed task items: memory entries about in-progress work that has since shipped.
• Duplicate information: entries in MEMORY.md that are already captured in memory/ daily log files (cross-reference).
• Outdated environment info: OS versions, tool versions, paths that have changed.
• Over-indexed topics: 5+ entries on the same topic → consider merging into one authoritative entry.

For each candidate removal, show the full entry text and ask: "Archive to daily log, merge, or keep?"

Never silently remove MEMORY.md entries — always show the user what will be deleted.

Cron / Periodic Usage

This skill does NOT auto-register a cron job. To set up periodic audits yourself:

Weekly audit cron (example):

# Add via: /schedule  OR  CronCreate tool
# Schedule: 0 9 * * 1  (every Monday 9am)
# Command: /prompt-diet audit-only

HEARTBEAT.md addition template (copy-paste into your HEARTBEAT.md):

## Prompt Diet Check (Weekly)
- Run token audit on workspace files
- Flag if any file has grown >20% since last check
- Remind user if MEMORY.md exceeds 200 lines

Manual one-off audit:

python3 /home/aif/.openclaw/workspace/skills/prompt-diet/scripts/token_count.py \
  /home/aif/.openclaw/workspace/ --format json | python3 -m json.tool

Limitations

This skill does not touch:

• OpenClaw core system prompt (injected by the harness, not a workspace file)
• Tool definitions and schemas
• Runtime metadata injected at conversation start (git status, date, etc.)
• Files outside the workspace directory
• Binary files, images, or non-text assets

Token counts are estimates (tiktoken cl100k_base encoding approximates Claude tokenization; actual Claude token counts may differ by ±5–10%).

Resources

scripts/

• token_count.py — Standalone token counter. Works with or without tiktoken installed.

references/

• compression-rules.md — Detailed per-file compression rules and examples.