§ Corrective
/reduce
Strip an interface to its essentials.
What it does
AI-generated interfaces add. They accumulate decoration, redundant labels, action bars, status badges, gradient surfaces — each element earning a quiet “maybe” rather than a “yes.” /reduce subtracts. It questions whether each element is doing work, removes the ones that aren’t, and surfaces the design that was hiding underneath the chrome.
Like the other correctives, it uses a smart-default autonomy model. Small reductions — removing decorative icons, unnecessary borders, redundant copy — get applied directly. Larger reductions — collapsing multiple action buttons into one, removing entire sections, restructuring information — are surfaced for your approval before executing.
Interactive
Audio: 5:32 · Guided by Maya Okafor
Morning Grounding
Begin the day with a few mindful minutes of breath awareness. Designed for beginners and experienced practitioners alike, this guided session walks you through three rounds of grounding breath before settling into open awareness.
Sit comfortably or lie down. The audio cues are gentle and infrequent — most of the practice is silence.
On Stillpoint
The after-state matches the actual practice card that ships at /case-study — Stillpoint’s cards are already lean. The before-state is illustrative: the same card padded with the metadata, badges, multi-paragraph copy, and dual CTAs AI tends to add when content discipline isn’t applied. /reduce’s actual work on Stillpoint is verification — no incremental Home.tsx changes were needed.
When to use it
- The interface feels busy or cluttered, with elements competing for attention.
- Card decoration (borders, shadows, backgrounds) is applied without earning its place.
- Multiple action buttons clutter the top of pages or sections, with most rarely used.
- Copy is verbose — subtitles repeating titles, helper text restating labels.
- Decorative icons and emojis appear next to text that already communicates clearly.
- A /survey has flagged excess elements and you want them addressed systematically.
How to use it
By default /reduce runs a full pass — decoration, redundant copy, action consolidation, and surface chrome. Pass a scope to focus on one area, or describe what you want stripped in plain language. /reduce surfaces the design that was hiding under decoration; if you want net-new design work, use /design.
- /reduce header
- /reduce decoration
Anti-patterns it addresses
- Decorative icons next to text that already communicates the same meaning. The icon + word pairing doubles the attention without adding information.
- Subtitles that repeat the title in different words — “Q3 Analytics — performance insights for the third quarter.” The reader already knows.
- Breadcrumb chains that just trail back to the page title — “Workspace › Projects › Q3 Analytics” when the next thing on screen is a heading that says Q3 Analytics.
- Action button bars at the top of every page with four to six utility buttons (Export, Share, Filter, More, Settings, Help) — most of which are rarely the primary task.
- Status badges, “updated N hours ago” timestamps, and ornament that adds visual weight without earning attention.
- Card surfaces with borders + shadows + backgrounds + rounded corners stacked together when one of those treatments would do the job.