# Progressive Disclosure (/academy/progressive-disclosure)



Progressive disclosure is a museum placard: six words on the wall, the essay in the drawer underneath.

You show the [agent](/academy/agent) the titles of twenty [skills](/academy/skill). It opens the one it needs. The rest stay shut, so the [context window](/academy/context-window) is not full of recipes for jobs it is not doing. Thirty full files would eat the room before the work started. Thirty honest labels cost almost nothing.

**The label has to be true**

A placard that undersells the drawer means the drawer never opens. A placard that bluffs — and buries the real step at the bottom — is worse. This plugin's `scaffold-project` description is a label on purpose: start a Next/Hono/[stack](/academy/stack), prefer [MCP](/academy/mcp), don't hand-roll. The long workflow lives in `SKILL.md`, one step away.

Same trick in a UI. The [builder](/builder) shows the bag, not every [CLI](/academy/cli) flag on the first screen. [CLAUDE.md](/academy/claude-md) and `AGENTS.md` should point at detail, not recite the manual. The [system prompt](/academy/system-prompt) stays short; the cards stay on the shelf.

You have used the human version for years. Advanced settings behind a click. Onboarding that asks three questions, not thirty. Dump the textbook on the first screen and both humans and models drown.

**What this unlocks**

You can install a lot of know-how without filling the room. The agent finds the right drawer. The desk stays readable.

Show the short version. Keep the depth one honest step away.