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eryzerzeryzerz/prime-pstack/skills/principle-laziness-protocol/SKILL.md

principle-laziness-protocol

Skill0 starsChanged 3 months agoMITView on GitHub

Apply when refactoring, evaluating diff size, or tempted to add abstractions, layers, or signal threading. Bias toward deletion and the smallest change that solves the problem.

46 other projects use a version of this, 37 of them edited.

Adopted by

Most recently taken up by

Used with

Projects with it also use principle-explain-the-number, poteto-help and 8 more.

Other files people use alongside this one.

Files found in the same public projects as a version of this one, more often than they turn up anywhere else. Each project counts once, large collections count for less, and this file's own repository is left out.
  • ianclearySkill

    principle-explain-the-number

    Apply before you trust, report, or act on a number you measured: a speedup, a regression, a throughput, a latency, or an eval result. Find what limits it, and rule out that it measured something other than the work you think.

    Also in 30 projects that use this

  • ianclearySkill

    poteto-help

    Guides users through pstack setup, /poteto-mode, and picking the skill, playbook, or principle for a task. Type /poteto-help with a question.

    Also in 14 projects that use this

  • tristanphvnSkill

    ketchup-video

    Catch the user up like /keel:ketchup, with a short silent video of slides for what happened and the waiting calls as text under it. Use for /keel:ketchup-video.

    Also in 11 projects that use this

  • drafaelSkill

    in-your-own-words

    Restate the user's goals and the problem they are trying to solve to check understanding. Manual invocation only; use when the user explicitly invokes in-your-own-words or requests this understanding check. Do not solve the task or rewrite the assistant's last answer.

    Also in 20 projects that use this

  • TheOnlyFusionCubeSkill

    maintain-formal-verification-skill

    Bring a project's formal verification back in line with the code after the code changes: find the commits that touched verified code, update the model, harness, or properties to describe the code as it is now, rerun, and say whether each failure is drift in the verification or a bug in the code. Use for /maintain-formal-verification-skill, \"is the model still true to the code\", or after merges and refactors that touched verified code without rechecking it.

    Also in 16 projects that use this

  • Xia-AtaraxiaSkill

    benchmark-checklist

    Vets performance measurements for the limiter, tuning, physical limits, errors, repeatability, relevance, and proof that timed work happened. It applies to 'check this benchmark', 'report this speedup', measured regressions, and choosing a library or configuration from numbers. It reports spread and gaps before drawing a conclusion. Not for general testing policy or choosing test oracles - use principle-testing.

    Also in 28 projects that use this

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

6 rules. 1 is common, 5 are distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.

  • 1

    Common

    Most of the 40 edited versions we read keep these.

  • 5

    Distinctive

    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
  1. Distinctive:

    Prefer deletion: When asked to refactor or improve, look for removals before additions.

    line 11
  2. Distinctive:

    Maintain a flat call hierarchy: Avoid deep call chains. A rich interface that hides substantial work is not a deep call chain.

    line 12
  3. Common:

    Consolidate decisions: Do not repeat the same choice in several places.

    line 13
  4. Distinctive:

    Question the threading: If a task asks you to pass a new signal through types, schemas, pipelines, or similar layers, stop and look for a …

    line 15
  5. Distinctive:

    Sweat the small leaks: Remove tiny pass-throughs, representation leaks, and duplicated choices before they spread.

    line 16
  6. Distinctive:

    Prime directive: If a human developer would find the code exhausting to maintain, it is a bad solution.

    line 18

“Common” is measured: kept by at least 6 in 10 of the 40 edited versions of this file we could read. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Laziness Protocol

Writing code is cheap for you, which makes over-engineering easy. Counter it by borrowing a human maintainer's fatigue. Aim for the most result with the least code and complexity.

  • Prefer deletion. When asked to refactor or improve, look for removals before additions.
  • Maintain a flat call hierarchy. Avoid deep call chains. A rich interface that hides substantial work is not a deep call chain. If answering a question requires tracing through more than 3 files or layers, flatten it.
  • Consolidate decisions. Do not repeat the same choice in several places. Put it behind one source of truth and pass the result as a simple flag.
  • Minimize the diff. Make the smallest change that solves the problem. Fewer lines beat "elegant" boilerplate.
  • Question the threading. If a task asks you to pass a new signal through types, schemas, pipelines, or similar layers, stop and look for a more direct path.
  • Sweat the small leaks. Remove tiny pass-throughs, representation leaks, and duplicated choices before they spread. Small leaks compound into permanent coordination costs.

Prime directive: If a human developer would find the code exhausting to maintain, it is a bad solution. Be lazy. Stay simple.

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