26d • Tool Talk
The elevator pitch. A skill!
Do you ever need to condense an article into a summary, or even a single sentence?
I created a skill for that!
To use it, edit anything that doesn't fit with your style (for example, your "house stye" may be differnt to mine,) paste it into your AI tool of choice, and ask it to create the skill.
---
name: elevator-pitch
description: >
Boils any article, document, transcript, or pasted text down to three versions:
a 30-second spoken elevator pitch, a 3-sentence summary, and a single-sentence
summary. Presents all three together, shortest to longest reading is not the
order, it's pitch, then 3 sentences, then 1 sentence, each one a tighter cut
of the last. Always trigger this whenever the user says "elevator pitch this,"
"boil this down," "give me the elevator pitch," "condense this," "pitch me
this," or hands over a long piece of text, article, transcript, or document
and asks for the short version, the gist, or something they can say out loud
in 30 seconds. Works on anything: news articles, blog posts, research papers,
meeting transcripts, proposals, whitepapers, pasted emails.
---
# Elevator pitch
Turn any source text into three progressively tighter summaries, and hand back
all three at once. The point is range: sometimes the reader has 30 seconds,
sometimes they have one breath. Give them both, plus the sentence in between.
## Before you start
Find the actual source text. It might be pasted directly in the conversation,
an uploaded file, or a document already discussed earlier in the thread. If
the user references something you don't have (a link with no fetchable
content, a file that didn't attach), ask for it rather than guessing at what
it says. Never invent facts, numbers, or claims that aren't in the source.
## What "boiled down" means here
Boiling something down isn't deleting sentences until it's short. It's finding
the one idea the whole piece is actually about, then rebuilding a shorter
version of just that idea, three times, at three different sizes. Each pass
should stand alone. Someone who only reads the one-sentence version should not
feel like they're missing the "real" answer.
Ask yourself as you read the source: if I could only tell someone one thing
about this, what would make them go "wait, really?" or "okay, that's useful
to know"? That's the core. Build outward from there.
Match the tone of the source material. A pitch about a cancer research paper
should sound different from one about a marketing case study. Don't force
everything into a punchy, hype-y register if the source is measured or
technical, and don't flatten something genuinely exciting into dry corporate
speak either. Follow the source's lead.
## The three versions
### 1. The elevator pitch (about 30 seconds spoken out loud)
Aim for roughly 75-90 words, this is what 30 seconds of natural speech sounds
like. Write it to be spoken, not read: short sentences, no jargon that needs
unpacking, no throat-clearing like "this piece discusses" or "in this article."
Just say the thing.
A solid structure to lean on (don't force it if the source doesn't fit):
what's the situation or problem, what's the key finding or idea, why does it
matter to the person hearing it.
### 2. Three sentences
Cut the pitch down to exactly three sentences. This is tighter than the pitch,
every word has to earn its place. A useful pattern: sentence one is the core
idea, sentence two is the key support or detail, sentence three is the
so-what or implication. Adjust if the source doesn't map cleanly to that.
### 3. One sentence
The whole thing in a single sentence. This is the hardest cut: it should
capture the one idea from "what boiled down means" above, not just be the
first sentence of the three-sentence version with the rest lopped off. If you
can't tell someone the core idea in one breath, that's a sign to reread the
source and figure out what actually is at the center of it.
## Output format
ALWAYS present all three together, labeled clearly, in this order:
```
**Elevator pitch (30 sec)**
[75-90 word spoken version]
**Three sentences**
[exactly three sentences]
**One sentence**
[a single sentence]
```
Don't add a preamble explaining what you're about to do. Don't add commentary
after the three versions unless the user asks a follow-up. Just deliver the
three cuts.
## House style (applies to all three versions)
- Sentence case for anything that reads like a title or label, never title case.
- Use contractions where natural (it's, don't, that's) rather than spelling
everything out.
- No em dashes, anywhere. Use a period, comma, or a colon instead.
- Don't fabricate statistics, quotes, or claims that aren't in the source. If
the source itself contains a stat or claim, it's fine to carry it through,
just don't add anything the source didn't say.
- Avoid generic AI-intro phrasing like "in today's fast-paced world" or "this
article explores." Start with the substance.
- Never use corrective reframing. That's the "you're not X, you have Y" or
"this isn't a character problem, it's a Z problem" construction, where a
sentence sets up a wrong belief just to knock it down. Even if the source
text uses this device, don't reproduce it. State the idea plainly instead.
For example, instead of "you're not unreliable, you have variable
capacity," write "your capacity is variable, and that's not the same thing
as being unreliable" or just "your capacity is variable." Say what's true,
don't stage a correction first.
## Edge cases
**Source is already short** (a tweet, a short email): the pitch and the
three-sentence version might end up nearly identical. That's fine, don't pad
either one artificially to hit a word count.
**Source has multiple big ideas, not one**: pick the throughline that ties
them together for the pitch and three-sentence version. For the one-sentence
version, you may need to explicitly name it as covering multiple things
("covers both X and Y") rather than forcing a false single idea.
**Source is highly technical**: keep the technical terms that are load-bearing
(the reader needs them to understand the point), but cut ones that are just
throat-clearing or field jargon that doesn't change the meaning if simplified.
1
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The elevator pitch. A skill!
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