Problem

compress.js has zero CJK-awareness. All regex patterns (ARTICLES, FILLERS, PLEASANTRIES, HEDGES, LEADERS) are English-only, but the ARTICLES regex /\b(?:a|an|the)\s+(?=[a-z])/gi incorrectly strips English articles from CJK-mixed text where they carry semantic weight.

In Chinese technical conversations, English articles before technical terms are meaningful — they signal specificity or quantity:

Even worse, LEADERS regex ^(?:i'll|i will|...)\s+ can accidentally delete English verb phrases that are embedded in Chinese sentences:

Root Cause

1. ARTICLES regex uses \b word boundary which matches at CJK↔English transitions, so "a LLM" gets caught
2. In pure English, removing "a/an/the" is fine — they're filler. In CJK-mixed text, English articles are not filler — they're semantic modifiers for technical terms embedded in Chinese
3. Chinese has no article concept (中文没有冠词), so the English article is the only way to express specificity for the embedded English term
4. compressProse() runs all regex regardless of whether the text contains CJK characters

Suggested Fix

In compress.js, add CJK-awareness to compressProse():

// Detect CJK-mixed text — Chinese, Japanese, Korean characters
const CJK_RE = /[一-鿿　-〿ぁ-ヶ가-힣]/;

function compressProse(text) {
  const hasCJK = CJK_RE.test(text);

  let s = text;
  s = s.replace(LEADERS, );
  s = s.replace(PLEASANTRIES, );
  s = s.replace(HEDGES, );
  s = s.replace(FILLERS, );

  // In CJK-mixed text, English articles are semantic — skip removal
  if (!hasCJK) {
    s = s.replace(ARTICLES, );
  }

  // ... rest unchanged
}

This is a minimal, safe change — it only skips ARTICLES removal when CJK characters are detected. All other compression (fillers, pleasantries, hedges) still applies in CJK-mixed text, which is correct — those are genuinely filler in any language context.

Related

• Multilingual support #8 (Multilingual support) — too broad, already closed
• feat: Add 文言文 (Classical Chinese) mode — terse, literary, ancient #34 (Classical Chinese mode) — different scope (wenyan is a deliberate style, not a bug)

Environment

• caveman v18e45320 (latest)
• Claude Code, Chinese + English mixed conversations
• macOS, Node.js v22