ab-v3 / ab-v4 showed Phase 1A (cookbook strip on obvious difficulty)
shaved ~4.4k tokens off T-obvious. Phase 2 adds a per-category gate
that strips cookbook recipes whose domain doesn't match the prompt's
category — mobile briefs don't see dashboard recipes, dashboard
briefs don't see mobile / landing recipes, etc.
Mechanism: HTML comment block markers in elements.md
(`<!-- @domain:dashboard --> ... <!-- /@domain -->`) plus a
stripNonMatchingDomains() pass in buildSystemPrompt that drops blocks
whose tag list doesn't include the active category. Untagged content
is "general" and stays in every variant — the safe default.
Tagged 7 single-domain cookbook recipes:
- dashboard: Team / members list, Audit / activity feed, Faceted
search filter sidebar, Dashboard KPI strip
- landing: Pricing section
- mobile: Onboarding "How it works", Support chat thread
Cross-domain recipes (Login, Signup, Settings page, OTP, Empty
inbox) stay untagged so they load for every category. Decision tree
+ PREFER list also untagged today; the per-tool annotations there
would be a much larger judgment pass for marginal additional savings.
Token measurements (chars / 4 estimate):
full mobile dashboard landing
- T + composite 19.0k 17.9k 18.4k 17.7k
(-1.1k) (-0.6k) (-1.3k)
- T + obvious 14.6k 13.5k 14.0k 13.3k
(-1.1k) (-0.6k) (-1.3k)
Modest absolute savings — Phase 2 only filters cookbook RECIPES (in
elements.md), and most cookbook content is in elements-cookbook.md
which Phase 1A already strips on obvious. To hit the 6-8k T target
we still need decision-tree compression or PREFER-list trim, but
both are lossier than this gate. Phase 3 candidates noted in the
ab-v4 results doc.
real-model.ts plumbs call.prompt.category through to buildSystemPrompt.
3766 vitest pass (+6 category filter tests including a 500-char
floor regression guard that the filter actually shaves bytes).
Codex stop-time review caught a contradiction: elements.md taught
"emit one <op_tool> per component" while T_TOOL_CALL_INSTRUCTIONS
explicitly forbade it ("Respond with one tag, nothing else" + "Do
not combine multiple tags"). Live models were probably reading the
later, more authoritative trailing instructions and dropping back to
batch_design — which matches ab-v3's 0/25 composite-T multi-tool
runs even though the cookbook had recipes.
Rewrites the T output-format block to:
- declare "one or more <op_tool> tags" up front
- add an explicit COMPOSITE clause showing chained tags for
multi-component briefs (settings panel / team list / audit feed /
onboarding) with a 3-tag worked example
- keep the FALLBACK clause for batch_design when no element tool fits
- keep the "no prose between tags" rule
Tests now assert the multi-tool marker is present in every T variant
AND the forbidding phrases ("one tag, nothing else", "Do not combine
multiple tags") are GONE — the regression guard Codex effectively
asked for. Also pulls in an oxfmt auto-format on the measurement
helper that landed unformatted in a3c5bf2d.
One-shot diagnostic that prints char + token-estimate sizes for every
(variant, difficulty) combination of buildSystemPrompt. Used to verify
the elements-cookbook diet is shaving the bytes the test floor
predicts (>10kb) before running an actual sweep. Confirms today's
numbers: B 15kb, T-obvious 57kb, T-composite 75kb — diet saves ~17kb
(~4.4k tokens) on every obvious prompt. Phase 2 (per-domain split)
still needed to hit the 6-8k target.
