clarifylisted

# Clarify a dense artifact into something you can act on You were just handed a wall of text — an interview round with seven cross-referenced questions, a design memo thick with session jargon. This skill takes **that exact artifact** and makes it clear enough to act on: one decision at a time, jargon defined, and the actual choices pulled to the surface. The move is **clarify by restructuring, never by simplifying**. The content stays at full precision and full reading level; only its *arrangement* changes. Lowering the altitude — plain words, an analogy, ELI5 — is a different job (see [Boundaries](#boundaries)). A clarification that loses or softens a decision is worse than the wall of text, so the fidelity rules below are hard, not aspirational. ## The core move 1. **Identify the target.** With an argument, that is the thing. Empty argument → the **previous assistant response** (see [Empty argument](#empty-argument--anaphora-default)). 2. **Ground it, don't recall it.** Re-read the actual artifact this turn — the message just sent, in full. Working from your memory of it instead of its text is how operative terms drift. 3. **Restructure faithfully** — chunk, define jargon, surface decisions (below), under the fidelity rules. 4. **Choose the medium** — artifact, local file, or terminal — per [Rendering](#rendering-artifact-forward). ## Empty argument — anaphora default With no argument, the target is the **assistant's own previous response** — the th