Certain aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to techniques for compactly describing lifted low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. A method for wireless communications by a transmitting device is provided. The method generally includes selecting a first lifting size value Z and a first set of lifting values for generating a first lifted LDPC code; generating the first lifted LDPC code by applying the first set of lifting values to interconnect edges in Z copies of a base parity check matrix (PCM) having a first number of base variable nodes and a second number of base check nodes to obtain a first lifted PCM corresponding to the first lifted LDPC code; determining a second set of lifting values for generating second lifted PCM corresponding to a second lifted LDPC code for a second lifting size value based on the first lifted PCM and the first set of lifting values; encoding a set of information bits based on at least one of: the first lifted LDPC code or the second lifted LDPC code to produce a code word; and transmitting the code word.