# `text` Source: [`src/text.ts`](https://github.com/AI-for-dev/combo/blob/main/src/text.ts) Reading what a model wrote, and cutting what it is handed: shortening text, and finding the structure in it. One concept, not a grab-bag: every function here takes free-form assistant text and makes something reliable out of it. They were each written three to five times across the workflows, the reporters and the extension, and the copies had already started to drift - one `truncate` that trimmed and one that did not, two identical brace scanners maintained apart. A model does not answer in a format. It answers in prose with the format somewhere inside, decorated with whatever markdown it felt like adding, which is why these are lenient by design. ## `head` *function* ```typescript export function head(text: string, max: number, what = "text"): string { /* … */ } ``` The first `max` characters, marked when something was cut. For what goes into a prompt: the start of a diff says more than its end, and an agent handed half a megabyte writes a worse message than one handed the first pages and told they were cut. `what` names the thing in the marker. ## `plural` *function* ```typescript export function plural(count: number, word: string): string { /* … */ } ``` `1 turn`, `2 turns`, `0 turns`. One rule in one place, because a count is shown in a widget, a notification and a listing at once, and they have to agree. Zero takes the plural, because English does. ## `saysWord` *function* ```typescript export function saysWord(output: string, word: string): boolean { /* … */ } ``` Whether `word` stands alone on one of the lines. The convention three workflows depend on - `LGTM`, `APPROVED`, `READY` - and the reason it is lenient: a model that has been told to answer with one word still writes `**LGTM**`, `## APPROVED` or `READY.`, and a strict match would loop forever waiting for a verdict already given. Decoration is stripped, case is ignored; a line with anything else on it still does not count. ## `tail` *function* ```typescript export function tail(text: string, max: number, dropped = 0): string { /* … */ } ``` The last `max` characters, marked when something was cut. For a check's output: the failure is at the end, after everything that passed, and the end is what a reader needs. `dropped` counts what a reader of a stream already let go before `text`, so the mark says the whole. ## `truncate` *function* ```typescript export function truncate(text: string, max: number): string { /* … */ } ``` One line, whitespace flattened, at most `max` characters with an ellipsis. `max` has no default on purpose: the width belongs to whoever is drawing, and a shared default would be the one number nobody chose.