Getting Started

This page walks through the three things you’ll do most: compress a file, estimate savings on a batch, and use fast mode.

Compress a Single File

laconic compress README.md

Compressed text goes to stdout. Stats go to stderr:

# README.md: 1648 → 1418 tokens (saved 230, 14.0%)

This means you can pipe the output cleanly:

laconic compress README.md > compressed.md
laconic compress README.md | pbcopy        # macOS clipboard
laconic compress README.md | xclip         # Linux clipboard

Compress from Stdin

Use - to read from stdin:

cat README.md | laconic compress -
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/.../README.md | laconic compress -

Estimate Savings (Without Compressing)

Want to know how much you’d save without producing output?

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%)

Fast Mode

If you only need the compressed text and don’t care about token statistics, use --fast (or -f):

laconic compress -f README.md

This skips the BPE tokenizer entirely, making compression near-instant even on large batches.

JSON Output

Add --json (or -j) for machine-readable output:

laconic compress -j README.md

{
  "file": "README.md",
  "original_tokens": 1648,
  "compressed_tokens": 1418,
  "tokens_saved": 230,
  "savings_pct": 13.96,
  "text": "# FastAPI Authentication Middleware\n..."
}

Batch Processing

Compress every markdown file in a directory:

for f in docs/*.md; do
  laconic compress -f "$f" > "compressed/$(basename "$f")"
done

Or estimate savings across an entire corpus:

laconic estimate docs/**/*.md

What to Expect

Savings depend on how much decorative structure the document contains. Pure prose gets 0% savings — and that’s correct. Laconic never modifies semantic content.