distilllisted

# Distill Most of a book boils away. Story, restatement, context, charisma -- all of it matters to a reader and none of it changes how an agent works. What condenses is small: the two or three moves the author actually invented. Distill finds those, proves each one earns its place, and ships them as skills built to this collection's doctrine. Everything else becomes the digest. The test for every unit: **holding it, does an agent behave differently in a nameable situation -- and could you check?** Knowledge that only makes answers sound wiser is reading material, not a skill. Beyond the description's branches, distill also fires when a prior distillation produced skills that never fire and the user wants them re-earned or retired. ## Ground rules **Work from the actual text.** Model memory of a book is a summary of other people's summaries -- quotes come out mangled and the distinctive units are exactly what memory flattens. If there is no file, stop and ask for one (for video or podcast, ask for the transcript). **Quote like a reviewer, not a reprinter.** At most one short quote per skill, under 25 words, attributed with its location (chapter, timestamp, or section). Everything else is restated in your own words. For non-English sources, translate yourself -- never lift a published translation. ## Gate -- triage the source Before reading deeply, estimate operational density: how much of this source tells someone *what to do* rather than what happened or how it felt?