mdx-formatter

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tighten-list-continuations

Collapse unwanted blank lines inside a list item whose children are continuation paragraphs

Collapse the blank line between two adjacent paragraph children of a list item when heuristics indicate the second paragraph is a continuation of the first sentence — the shape AI authors sometimes emit when wrapping long bullet items.

Modes

ValueDefaultBehavior
"off"Never collapse. Output is byte-identical to the input for this rule.
"heuristic"✓Collapse only when (a) the item’s children are paragraphs only, (b) they are separated by exactly one blank line at continuation indent, and (c) the second paragraph starts with a continuation signal (lowercase letter, backtick, (, [, ", ', ,, en-dash, em-dash) — except when the second paragraph’s first line matches the shape key: value (an identifier followed by a colon, required whitespace, and a non-empty value), in which case the blank line is always preserved regardless of signal (c).
"aggressive"Drop trigger (c); collapse any paragraphs-only list item whose paragraphs are separated by exactly one blank line.

Config

{
  "tighten-list-continuations": "heuristic"
}

This key sits at the top level of the config — not nested under an object. See the Options overview for the list-normalize section.

Example

Before:

- No `candle`, `ort` / ONNX Runtime, `llama.cpp` / `llama-cpp-2`, `tch` / libtorch, or

  `rust-bert` dependency in `tauri-app/Cargo.toml` or `tauri-app/core/Cargo.toml`.
- No `gguf` / `.onnx` / `.safetensors` assets in the repo.

After ("heuristic" — default):

- No `candle`, `ort` / ONNX Runtime, `llama.cpp` / `llama-cpp-2`, `tch` / libtorch, or
  `rust-bert` dependency in `tauri-app/Cargo.toml` or `tauri-app/core/Cargo.toml`.
- No `gguf` / `.onnx` / `.safetensors` assets in the repo.

The second paragraph starts with ` (inline code), which is a heuristic continuation signal — the blank gap is collapsed.

Key
metadata paragraph is preserved

A continuation paragraph whose first line matches the shape identifier: value is treated as metadata and is always preserved in "heuristic" mode, even though it starts with a lowercase letter.

Before:

- [ ] Fix critical crash #dev

  priority: urgent
  App crashes on launch for iOS 17 users.
- [ ] Security patch #dev

  priority: high
  Update authentication tokens before expiry.

After ("heuristic" — default):

- [ ] Fix critical crash #dev

  priority: urgent
  App crashes on launch for iOS 17 users.
- [ ] Security patch #dev

  priority: high
  Update authentication tokens before expiry.

Output is byte-identical — the blank line before priority: urgent and priority: high is kept because those paragraphs start with a key: value-shaped line.

In "aggressive" mode the blank gaps collapse regardless of the key

shape.

Tradeoffs and scope

The key

guard matches any line of the form word: non-empty-value, so it preserves some prose lines that happen to share that shape:

  • Note: see below — preserved (deliberate tradeoff; this shape is rare enough and the false-preserve is harmless).
  • key: with an empty value — not matched; the blank line is still collapsed (requires non-empty value after the colon).
  • https://example.com — not matched; the colon is immediately followed by // with no space, so the required-whitespace rule excludes URLs.

Capital-initial continuation is left alone

Before:

- first item that intros a follow-up topic.

  Also, this is a new sentence but starts with a capital word.

Output in "heuristic" mode is byte-identical — the capital start suggests a deliberate new topic, not a continuation.

In "aggressive" mode the blank gap collapses regardless.

Notes

  • The rule runs before wrap-markdown in the formatter pipeline, and after the three recover-escaped-* rules. See rule ordering.
  • The rule is idempotent — running the formatter twice on the tightened output produces no further change.
  • Sublists and fenced code children disqualify an item from collapsing in both modes.

Revision History