KISS — Keep It Minimal

Purpose

Given a diff or staged changes, strip everything down to the smallest set of modifications that achieves the stated goal. Nothing more.

What to remove or simplify

• Refactors or restructuring not required by the fix
• Variable/function renames that aren't part of the stated goal
• Comment additions or edits beyond the changed lines
• Import reordering or cleanup
• Whitespace normalization unrelated to the change
• "While I'm here" fixes — flag these as separate tasks instead
• New abstractions or helpers not required by the change
• Extra test coverage beyond what directly tests the change
• Style or formatting changes outside the modified logic

What to simplify (overengineering)

• Constants or data structures that wrap what could be inline literals
• Helper functions called only once — inline them
• Intermediate variables that just rename what they hold
• Multi-step logic that can be a single expression
• Generic/parameterized code where one concrete case exists
• Abstractions built for hypothetical future callers
• Overly defensive null checks or fallbacks for impossible states
• Tests with elaborate setup for simple assertions — simplify the fixture

Process

1. Identify the stated goal — what is this change trying to do? One sentence.
2. Read the full diff — git diff HEAD or git diff --staged
3. For each hunk, ask: is this hunk strictly required to achieve the goal? If no, mark it for removal.
4. Separate the extras — list anything removed with a one-line reason; offer to file each as a standalone task.
5. Apply the trimmed diff — edit files to remove the extras, keeping only what's necessary.
6. Verify — run tests on the trimmed change to confirm it still achieves the goal.

Rules

• Prefer editing one line over editing a function; prefer editing a function over editing a file.
• A change that touches N files should touch N-1 files if possible.
• If in doubt about whether something is necessary, remove it and note it.
• Never introduce new patterns or dependencies in a KISS pass.
• Flagged extras go into a list at the end — never silently dropped.