atelier-distill
Distill
Keep a repo's agent memory worth reading. Every session reads the lessons journals in full before its first action, so an unpruned journal is a cost paid on every session, and a superseded or already-enforced entry is noise the next reader has to discount. The journals are append-only between passes; this skill runs the compaction pass the main standard defines: every entry gets one verdict with its evidence, the user approves, the pass archives before it removes, and every original entry is accounted for afterwards.
It is one of four focused, on-demand companions to the always-on atelier standard: atelier-grill-me owns the pre-decision moment, atelier-greenfield repo birth, atelier-review-me the pre-land moment, atelier-distill the moment the memory outgrows itself.
Interaction and agent discipline: as the main atelier skill's Interaction section (terse, answer first, no em dashes, one question round led by your recommendation, next steps at wrap-up), including its gate: never commit or push without the user's yes (rule 25).
When to use
- The user asks to clean up, prune, compact, dedupe, or reorganize the lessons journals, the plan,
CLAUDE.md, or the agent's memory folder. - The main atelier skill found a journal over its cap (100 entries or ~15 KB) at session start, and the user took the offer.
- Not for capturing new lessons at session end (the main atelier skill proposes those), reviewing code or a diff (atelier-review-me), a README audit (the main skill's guideline 5), a CHANGELOG (a release record, never compacted), or the cross-repo lessons harvest (an audit,
references/lessons.md).
Match intensity to the ask: a journal under its cap with a few stale entries needs a short report, not the full ledger.