dsh-trim-cot-leakage

# Trimming Chain-of-Thought Leakage Chain-of-thought leakage is prose whose vantage is the authoring session rather than the repository: it cites artifacts only that session could see, narrates the change instead of the state, or argues with a reviewer who has left. The fix is never deletion alone when a passage carries factual clauses — restate each so it stands at HEAD, then delete the transcript around it; a passage carrying none (an audit code, control-flow narration) is deleted outright. **REQUIRED BACKGROUND:** [dsh-prose-standard](../dsh-prose-standard/SKILL.md) owns the complete-proposition rule this skill applies; the [committed-artifact-citations note](../../notes/implemented/process/2026-08-09-committed-artifact-citations.md) owns the citation rule's rationale. It is guidance, not a script. ## The one test For every suspect passage ask: **could a reader at HEAD, with no access to any session transcript, PR thread, or uncommitted draft, resolve every reference and verify every claim?** If no, restate the surviving facts from the repository's vantage and delete the rest. If yes, it is not leakage, however historical it sounds — but resolvability only clears this skill's bar: on current-state surfaces (READMEs, docs, JSDoc) a resolvable change story is still change narration, and class 3 routes it to its sanctioned home. ## Taxonomy 1. **Dead design-session citations** — `(decision 7)`, `(audit C2)`, `design §4.7`, `plan §1.4`, phase labels (`T4`, `W3`, `P-I`), "...