Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

CLI Reference

laconic compress

Compress one or more markdown files and output the result.

laconic compress [OPTIONS] <FILES>...

Arguments

ArgumentDescription
<FILES>...One or more file paths. Use - for stdin.

Options

FlagShortDescription
--json-jOutput as JSON (includes token counts and savings)
--fast-fSkip token counting (faster, no stats in text mode)
--no-tablesDisable markdown table compaction
--no-htmlDisable HTML table conversion and HTML cleanup
--no-badgesDisable badge/shield image stripping
--url-dedupEnable URL deduplication (off by default)

Output Behavior

  • Compressed text goes to stdout
  • Statistics go to stderr
  • Exit code 0 on success, 1 on error

This means you can pipe cleanly:

laconic compress input.md > output.md       # redirect text
laconic compress input.md 2>/dev/null       # suppress stats
laconic compress input.md 2>stats.txt       # capture stats separately

Examples

# Basic compression
laconic compress README.md

# Fast mode, no token counting
laconic compress -f README.md

# JSON output for scripting
laconic compress -j README.md | jq '.tokens_saved'

# Stdin
cat README.md | laconic compress -

# Preserve tables, skip HTML cleanup
laconic compress --no-tables --no-html README.md

# Multiple files
laconic compress docs/*.md

laconic estimate

Estimate token savings without producing compressed output.

laconic estimate [OPTIONS] <FILES>...

Arguments

ArgumentDescription
<FILES>...One or more file paths. Use - for stdin.

Options

FlagShortDescription
--json-jOutput as JSON

Output

Per-file stats go to stdout. When processing multiple files, a TOTAL summary goes to stderr.

laconic estimate docs/*.md

docs/api.md: 3044 → 2446 tokens (saved 598, 19.6%)
docs/guide.md: 1572 → 1572 tokens (saved 0, 0.0%)
TOTAL: 4616 → 4018 tokens (saved 598, 12.9%)

Environment Variables

VariableDefaultDescription
LACONIC_TELEMETRY1Set to 0 to disable anonymous usage telemetry

POSIX Compliance

Laconic follows POSIX utility conventions:

  • - reads from stdin
  • -- ends option parsing
  • Short flags: -j, -f
  • stdout for data, stderr for diagnostics
  • Exit 0 on success, >0 on failure
  • SIGPIPE handled correctly (piping to head/tail works)
  • Output always ends with a newline