Shorthand: build always-on output style and auditor sub-agent

[dilberryhoundog]

Source

The Shorthand language spec lives at docs/shorthand/shorthand.md (full prose) with its shorthand-register original at docs/shorthand/shorthand.bak.md. Both are authoritative; the prose version expands the shorthand version block-for-block.

Deliverable 1 — output style

Create extensions/output-styles/shorthand.md, an always-on output style for the main agent.

• Body extracts from the spec's Style, Writing, Tuning, Expanding, Compressing, Inside full documents, and Agent edits sections.
• The Philosophy section maps to the style's description/framing, not its body (it is the spec's why; the body carries only how).
• The main agent performs compressing and expanding itself, inline — these verbs are not delegated. Sub-agent latency on every edit was rejected during design.
• Core protocol: agent edits are proposed as shorthand (in HTML comments inside existing documents) before any full prose is written; the user tunes blocks; expansion only on user approval.
• Trigger scope: writing markdown and text.

Deliverable 2 — auditor sub-agent

Create an auditor agent (e.g. extensions/agents/shorthand-auditor.md), report-only, no writes.

• Job: audit shorthand before expansion, and/or audit an expansion against its shorthand.
• Checks: one claim per block, 2-6 word blocks with terminal periods, telegraphic register that still reads cleanly, load-bearing modifiers kept, claim-set preservation (nothing dropped, nothing added), round-trip compatible prose.
• Output: a difficulties/divergence report listing each questionable block or passage with what is unclear or lost. The report crosses the context boundary back to the main agent; it is the only artifact.
• Optional in the workflow: quick inline edits skip the audit; consequential documents use it as a gate before expansion.

Design findings to honour (from round-trip testing)

• Word priors matter: "shorthand" (stenography prior, mechanistic) outperforms "compress" (summarisation prior, lossy). Keep the spec's vocabulary in both artifacts.
• Compression's failure mode is shaved single-word modifiers ("user", "HTML") rationalised as recoverable from context — the auditor should weight these heavily.
• Expansion flourishes become compression casualties one cycle later; "round-trip compatible prose" is the operative constraint.
• The claim is the unit of the language in both directions; sentences are surface artifacts and are deliberately unbound.

Distribution

Wire the new assets into a plugin via symlinks per repository convention (likely chat-tools or agent-tools; decide at build time).