Content Accessibility · Recommended · Medium impact

Token efficiency (content-to-markup ratio)

A bloated DOM wastes an agent's context window.

Recommended
Medium impact
Draft standard

Token efficiency (content-to-markup ratio) — Property, Value
Property	Value
Check id	`token-efficiency`
Dimension	Content Accessibility (22%)
Tier	Recommended — pool 20 pts
Weight inside tier	2
Impact	Medium
Maturity	Draft — A published specification that is not yet ratified.
Conditional	No
Publishing skill	`token-efficiency`
Standards	—

What is measured

The scanner strips <script>, <style>, <svg> and <template> blocks from the homepage /, removes the remaining tags, normalises whitespace and divides visible characters by the raw HTML size. Pass when text is at least 15% of the page; partial between 8% and 14.9%; fail below 8%, where the markup an agent must read outweighs the content.

Reproduce it yourself

You do not have to take our word for any of this. Run the same measurement against your own domain:

              DOMAIN="https://example.com"
html=$(curl -sL "$DOMAIN/"); text=$(printf '%s' "$html" | perl -0777 -pe 's{<(script|style|svg|template|noscript)[^>]*>.*?</\1>}{}gsi; s/<[^>]*>/ /g; s/\s+/ /g'); printf 'text=%d chars, html=%d chars, ratio=%d%%\n' "${#text}" "${#html}" "$(( ${#text} * 100 / ${#html} ))"

The fix

This is the artifact to ship. It is the complete change, not a description of one.

              // scripts/tighten-html.mjs — run after the build over every emitted page.
import { readdirSync, readFileSync, statSync, writeFileSync } from 'node:fs';
import { join } from 'node:path';
import { minify } from 'html-minifier-terser';

const walk = (dir) => readdirSync(dir).flatMap((name) => {
  const p = join(dir, name);
  return statSync(p).isDirectory() ? walk(p) : p.endsWith('.html') ? [p] : [];
});

for (const file of walk('dist')) {
  const before = readFileSync(file, 'utf8');
  const after = await minify(before, {
    collapseWhitespace: true,
    removeComments: true,
    removeRedundantAttributes: true,
    minifyCSS: true,
    minifyJS: true,
  });
  writeFileSync(file, after);
  console.log(`${file}: ${before.length} -> ${after.length} bytes`);
}

Related checks

Related checks — Check, Tier, Impact, Same skill
Check	Tier	Impact	Same skill
`markdown-negotiation` — Markdown content negotiation	Recommended	Critical	—
`headings` — Semantic heading structure	Essential	High	—
`meta` — Title and summary metadata	Essential	High	—
`jsonld` — JSON-LD structured data	Essential	Critical	—
`faq-schema` — FAQ / question-answer schema	Recommended	High	—
`breadcrumb` — Breadcrumb / navigation schema	Emerging	Low	—
`summary` — Prominent summary block	Recommended	Medium	—
`lang` — Language declaration and multilingual access	Recommended	Medium	—