New to skills? A skill is a saved set of instructions your AI assistant reads whenever the job comes up, so you set it up once and it works the same way every time. AI Skills for Teams explains how they work.
Trim padding, keep substance
Most text shorteners strip qualifiers, flatten tone and drop the facts that made the argument work. You've probably seen it: a careful paragraph becomes a generic sentence. A proposal loses the numbers that persuaded someone. A voice that was confident becomes vague.
This shortener works differently. It cuts the padding - the redundant words, the filler phrases, the sentences that say the same thing twice. The substance stays: every number, name, qualifier, and call to action. Your voice stays too. You come out with text that reads like the original, just tighter.
What it cuts
- Redundant words: "absolutely essential" becomes "essential", "end result" becomes "result".
- Unnecessary fillers: "It is important to note that" becomes "Note that", "in order to" becomes "to".
- Wordy phrases: "at this moment in time" becomes "now", "due to the fact that" becomes "because".
- Sentence structures that repeat themselves when they could combine. "The reason why we must act is that time is running out" becomes "We must act because time is running out".
- Extra words wherever the meaning stays clear without them.
What it never cuts
- Facts, numbers, dates, names or company names.
- Words that change the meaning: qualifiers like "nearly", "may" or "likely".
- The call to action or the closing ask.
- Your voice, tone or spelling (UK or US).
A worked example
Here's a made-up LinkedIn post, with a target of under 310 characters.
Original (366 characters, 68 words): "Over the last three years, we've worked with more than forty accountancy practices on how they use AI, and the thing that we keep seeing again and again is that the firms that get real results are the ones that start out with one specific, clearly defined problem. If you'd like to see how that works in practice, the full case study is linked in the comments below."
Shortened (306 characters, 55 words): "Over three years, we've worked with more than forty accountancy practices on how they use AI, and we keep seeing the same thing: the firms that get real results start with one specific, clearly defined problem. If you'd like to see how that works in practice, the full case study is linked in the comments."
That's 16% shorter and under the target. The three years, the forty practices, "real results" and the link to the case study all survived. What went was "the thing that", "again and again", "the ones that" and "start out". It still sounds like the same person wrote it.
When to use it
- An email or Slack message you're over the character limit on.
- A LinkedIn post that reads too long before you hit "share".
- A proposal section that's running over page count.
- Any document where you need to cut about 10% without losing meaning.
- Tight platform limits - job postings, ad copy, form fields that have a max.
What it won't do
This tool trims padding, so it doesn't handle summarising - if you need a summary, ask for one. It preserves technical language and precision: if your original is exact, the shortened version stays exact. Like any AI tool, it can miss something or misread the emphasis of a sentence, so read through the result before you send it out. You're the final check.
How to install it
Download it. The zip below holds the skill as a single folder. Upload it wherever your AI assistant takes skills. In Claude, Skills are on the free plan. In ChatGPT, they're on Business, Enterprise, Healthcare and Edu plans only.
Or copy it. Paste the whole block below into any AI assistant. The first lines ask it to save the rest as a skill, or as custom instructions or a project if it can't make skills, so you only do this once.
Read it first. The skill is one plain-text file with no scripts, so you can read every line before you install it. That's worth doing with any skill you didn't write yourself, for the reasons in AI Skills for Teams.
Then give it text to shorten. You can set a target (200 characters, 150 words, a percentage cut, or a platform limit like LinkedIn). Or just give it text and it'll aim for about 10% off. Either way, you'll get the shortened version in a code block, counts for before and after.
More free skills
Before you cut anything that matters, the Beta Tester shows you which parts your readers care about. If the text is a book description, the Book Blurb Writer writes it to the right length from the start. The full set is on the Resources page.
