Distill · Score · Keep

SKIP THE PADDING
KEEP THE SIGNAL

You already found the gems. dstll.io distills the few ideas worth keeping out of long videos and padded articles, tells you how much signal was actually in there, and keeps them somewhere you'll want to return.

dis·till /dɪˈstɪl/ · verb

to extract the essence from a mass of material — to boil off the padding until only what carries meaning is left. That's the whole job: long video in, the two or three ideas that matter out.

90-min video 11-min article 3 ideas kept Signal: 14 / 100
COMPRESS
＋ Add to Chrome — it's free See how it works
8 min
of real signal in a 92-minute talk —
shown before you spend the time
3 levels
thesis · principles · outline.
dial the resolution to the source

Works on anything you can read or watch. A YouTube talk, a dense article, a docs page — same flow, one keystroke. The source only changes how we get clean text out of the page.

Manifest V3 · side panel
01 / COMPRESSION SLIDER

Same content. You pick the resolution.

Most 40-minute videos hold two or three real ideas. The craft is ruthless extraction — not a tidy paragraph.

Compression level
Source
Cold Exposure & Dopamine
Huberman Lab · 1:34:08
PRINCIPLES · 3 IDEAS KEPT↩ links back to source
12:30Cold raises dopamine ~2.5× over a slow curve that lasts hours — unlike the spike-and-crash of most stimulants.
41:05The discomfort is the mechanism. Staying in it (not the duration) is what drives the adaptation.
1:08:20Timing beats temperature: brief and genuinely cold beats long and tolerable.
02 / SIGNAL-TO-NOISE SCORE

The number nobody else dares to show.

It rates how much real information a piece carries versus how much is padding. The line above the number is the one people screenshot.

▌ The framing, scaled to the medium
About 8 minutes of signal in this 92-minute talk.
And for text: "about 90 seconds of real reading in this 11-minute article." We measure compression ratio, padding, and idea density — then tune against videos we know cold until the number matches the gut.
Signal score
14 / 100
Mostly padding
Signal Padding & repetition
03 / YOUR COLLECTION

A feed of your own learnings — that ends.

Every kept item carries a forced one-line "why," tags, and a link straight back to the moment it came from. Finiteness is a feature.

YOUTUBE 14 / 100

Deliberate cold exposure raises baseline dopamine for hours

"Why I'm keeping this — the slow-burn dopamine bump is the whole reason cold plunges feel good after, not during."

electronicsdopamine↩ 12:30
ARTICLE 31 / 100

CO₂ tolerance, not O₂ capacity, sets your breath-hold

"Why I'm keeping this — explains why box breathing actually works; train the urge, not the lungs."

breathwork§ Methods
04 / PRINCIPLES

The wall tattoos.

What this product refuses to become.

P.01

Finiteness is a feature

You review ten ideas and close the app feeling done. Doomscrolling never ends — and that's exactly why it's poison.

P.02

Recall over re-exposure

Watching a fun clip is recognition. The product earns its keep when it makes you pull the answer out of your own head.

P.03

Score the noise, respect the time

Surfacing how much signal a video really contains is a promise: we're on your side, not the creator's watch-time side.

P.04

Pleasant on top, a real rep underneath

Enjoyable re-exposure helps a little. Producing the answer yourself is what makes it stick. Every session, one real beat.

KEEP THE GEMS

Stop saving things you'll never reopen. Start keeping the few that matter. The Chrome extension is in build — join the waitlist and we'll send the install link.