Cut tokens for a .NET project

Goal: take a .NET solution and produce one payload that costs far fewer tokens than the raw source, without losing the public API.

Do it

fuse dotnet --directory ./src --all

--all applies every C# reduction at once: it removes comments, usings, namespaces, and regions, compresses aggressively, and collapses generated bodies.

What you get

Fused 218 files
Estimated tokens: 166,740 (-36.0%)
cache: 0 hit / 218 miss
Output: FluentValidation_2026-06-20_166k.txt

That is a 36 percent cut on this project, at 100 percent of public types and methods. The output opens with a manifest listing each file and its token cost, then the reduced files largest first.

Keep only production code

Exclude test projects to fuse just the shipping surface:

fuse dotnet --directory ./src --exclude-test-projects --all

Use --exclude-unit-test-projects instead to drop unit tests but keep integration tests and benchmarks.

When to use it

Reach for --all whenever you want the most reliable cut with the API intact: feeding a model the implementation, archiving context for a task, or pasting a project into a chat. If you only need the shape of the codebase, a skeleton survey cuts far more. If the result is still too large, scope it to the files the task touches.

Related concept

The full ladder from light cleanup to skeletons is in Reduction levels.