Longread Skill

Use this skill when a file is too large to read in a single pass (e.g. cat, read_file, or Read tool hits size limits or truncates output).

Step 0: Assess Suitability (REQUIRED)

Before splitting, determine whether the file is actually suitable for the chunk-and-summarize pattern. Not all large files benefit from this approach.

Files SUITABLE for this skill (non-structured, prose-like content):

• PDF documents (reports, papers, books, manuals)
• DOCX documents (articles, contracts, essays)
• TXT / MD files (long-form text, documentation)
• PPTX files (slide decks with text content)

Files NOT suitable — use code instead:

• CSV, TSV, DTA, XLS/XLSX — structured/tabular data. Use pandas, Stata, or other data tools to query, filter, aggregate. Splitting rows across chunks destroys data integrity.
• JSON, JSONL — structured data. Use jq or Python to parse and extract.
• Log files — typically need grep/awk/filtering, not summarization.
• Source code files — use grep, AST tools, or targeted reads with offset/limit.