Shorten

The /shorten command analyzes your prompt, highlights some of your prompt's most influential words, and suggests unnecessary words you could remove. With this command, you can optimize your prompt by focusing on essential terms.

Analyze a Prompt with /shorten

The Midjourney Bot analyzes your prompt by breaking it down into smaller units known as tokens. These tokens can be phrases, words, or even syllables. The Midjourney Bot converts these tokens into a format it can understand. It uses them with the associations and patterns learned during its training to guide how your image is generated. Think of tokens as the building blocks that help the Midjourney Bot make sense of the input and create the desired visual output.

Long prompts with unnecessary words, lengthy descriptions, poetic phrases, or direct addressing of the bot ("Please make me an image," "Thank you for your help, Midjourney Bot!") can lead to unexpected elements being added to your images.

The /shorten command can help you discover the most important words in your prompt and what words you can omit.

/shorten Command Example

If you want to create a pile of sprinkle covered donuts you might try the prompt:
Please create a whimsical majestic tower of donuts, intricately crafted and adorned with a mesmerizing array of colorful sprinkles. Bring this sugary masterpiece to life, ensuring every detail is rendered in stunning magical realism. Thank you!

If you use /shorten command with the above prompt the Midjourney Bot will return the following information:

The most Important tokens in your prompt are highlighted in bold, the least important are stikethroughed. You will also be given 5 possible shorter prompts based on this information.

Shortened Option 1️⃣

Please, majestic tower of donuts, crafted, array of colorful sprinkles, sugary masterpiece, rendered, magical realism

Shortened Option 2️⃣

Please, majestic tower of donuts, colorful sprinkles, sugary masterpiece, rendered, magical realism

Shortened Option 3️⃣

majestic tower of donuts, colorful sprinkles, sugary, magical realism

Shortened Option 4️⃣

majestic tower of donuts, colorful sprinkles, magical

Shortened Option 5️⃣

tower of donuts, sprinkles

Analyzing the Results

The shortest prompt, Option 5️⃣ : tower of donuts, sprinkles produced an image closest to the original goal. Many of the filler words like "whimsical," "mesmerizing," and "masterpiece" could be omitted. Learning that "tower" and "magical" were considered important tokens helps explain why some images were generated with fairytale castle elements. Learning this provided a clue that "magical" should be removed from the prompt if the goal was to create a stack of delicious donuts.

How to Use Shorten

Use the /shorten <your prompt> command in any Bot Channel to get information on your prompt