redesign-from-first-principles
Skill1 starsChanged 57 days agoMITView on GitHub
Integrate a new requirement into an existing design by redesigning as if the requirement had been a foundational assumption from day one, rather than bolting it on. Use when a change has to land in a design that was written without it.
2 other projects use a version of this, 1 of them edited.
Adopted by
Most recently taken up by
- rockcookies/skillsedited, first seen Oct 13, 2026
- khgouldy/skillstheir own version, first seen Oct 11, 2026
Other versions2 projects use a version of this.
Word for word · 0
None found.
Edited · 1
- rockcookies/skills★ 187% same
Wrote their own version · 1
- khgouldy/skills★ 1same name
How matches are found. Word for word: the exact same text. Edited: shares passages with this file (“99% same” means 99% of its five-word phrases also appear here; 10% or more counts). Their own version: similar meaning, or, weakest, the same name. We can’t tell which project had it first. Projects are counted among the 200 most-starred candidates, and mentions are links to the repository we found, up to 50 per site, so both counts are a floor.
In this repository27 other files it gives its agents.
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The file
We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent
3 rules. About 0 are common, 3 are distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.
≈0
Common · estimate
Many files like this have a rule of this kind.
≈3
Distinctive · estimate
This author's own choices. Worth a look.
0
Very specific
Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.
- Common
- Distinctive
- Very specific
- Distinctive: line 9
When integrating a change, don't bolt it onto the existing design.
- Distinctive: line 11
Read all affected files and understand the current design.
- Distinctive: line 12
Ask: "if we were writing this from scratch with this new requirement, what would we build?"
≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.
Files
Redesign From First Principles
When integrating a change, don't bolt it onto the existing design. Redesign as if the requirement had been there from the start.
- Read all affected files and understand the current design.
- Ask: "if we were writing this from scratch with this new requirement, what would we build?"
- Propagate the change through every reference: types, docs, examples, rationale sections.
- Think about the whole redesign, then deliver it incrementally.
This is the method for preserving option value when integrating changes into an existing design.
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