node · 2026-06-04 principle proposal public

# Diagrams & quotes over summaries

Not a paste-once reminder — a standing direction that ratchets up with every model generation. The whole reason for the heavy refactor.

### ★ Persistent goal — confirmed 2026-06-07

"persistent future/goal will take lots of iteration and lots of room for improvement general direction here, yes. I am a human with a visual cortex. As the models get better, I want to keep working to make the visualizations better."— Jake, verbatim

The 140-char cap is the floor. The ceiling keeps rising:

today
next model
+1
→ better viz

"we never want summaries longer than a tweet (longer than 140 characters-ish). We much prefer quoting text, including from the web, to support things." — Jake, 2026-06-04 (verbatim)

How far an agent should reach for each form. Prose is capped at a tweet; everything else carries the weight.

### ✕ Don't

A paragraph of the agent's own paraphrase.

### ✓ Do

Quote the source:

"…the exact words…"
+ diagram+ table

≤ ~140 chars of agent prose.

Ready to paste into AGENTS.md:
"Summaries are never longer than a tweet (~140 chars). Prefer a quote (including from the web), a diagram, or a table over an agent-written summary. Diagrams > summaries."

This isn't new — the audit found an existing principle that already says it, and that the prompts violate it: `node-iceberg-inverted` ("show me 10%, a materialized view"). See principles-adherence-audit.