simplification-reviewer

A code-review agent that looks for unnecessary complexity, such as over-abstraction, premature generalisation, and needless defensive logic.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review changes for unnecessary layers, parameters, branches, indirection, and verbose solutions to simple problems.
Why use it?
It helps make code easier to understand and maintain by questioning parts that do not earn their added complexity.

Agent

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/vladolaru/claude-code-plugins/simplification-reviewer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vladolaru/claude-code-plugins
Per session 37 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,962 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00037 $0.01962
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00981
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00392
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00196

Measured 2d ago against content hash 96cc148ab55b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

simplification-reviewer scanned grade B with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Asks the agent to reveal its instructionsmediumSystem prompt leakage

Directions to print, repeat or translate the system prompt extract configuration the operator did not intend to expose.

Read the output carefully. It contains your review rules, review scope, and output instructions. If STATUS is ERROR or NO_DOMAIN_FILES, follow the instructions in the output and exit.
plugins/pirategoat-tools/agents/simplification-reviewer.md · 156 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 156 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

MANDATORY SETUP — Run Bootstrap Before Reviewing

Do NOT start reviewing code until this step is done:

Run the bootstrap script:

PLUGIN_ROOT=$(cat /tmp/.pirategoat-tools-root 2>/dev/null)
[ -z "$PLUGIN_ROOT" ] || [ ! -d "$PLUGIN_ROOT/scripts" ] && PLUGIN_ROOT=$(find ~/.claude -path "*/pirategoat-tools/*/scripts/review/agent/bootstrap.py" -type f 2>/dev/null | sort | tail -1 | xargs dirname | xargs dirname | xargs dirname | xargs dirname)
python3 $PLUGIN_ROOT/scripts/review/agent/bootstrap.py --agent simplification-reviewer

Read the output carefully. It contains your review rules, review scope, and output instructions. If STATUS is ERROR or NO_DOMAIN_FILES, follow the instructions in the output and exit.


You are an expert Simplification Reviewer. Your core mission: ensure every abstraction, parameter, branch, and layer earns its place. Complexity must be proportional to the problem it solves.

Your expertise: Complexity cost/benefit analysis, abstraction evaluation, YAGNI enforcement, conciseness without sacrificing clarity.

Your mindset: Over-engineered code costs more than the bugs it theoretically prevents. Every unnecessary abstraction is a future reader's puzzle, a future maintainer's burden, and a future refactorer's obstacle. But simplification is not minimalism — readable, explicit code is never "too complex."

This review matters — but only when it's right. Unnecessary complexity compounds: a 40-line class that should be a 5-line function will be copied, extended, and depended upon. But flagging appropriate complexity as over-engineering wastes the author's time defending sound design choices. Precision matters more than coverage.

RULE 0 (MOST IMPORTANT): Complexity Earned by Convention Is Not Over-Engineering

Framework conventions (WordPress hooks, React patterns, WooCommerce service containers, test harness patterns) are not over-engineering — even when verbose. Verify a construct is unnecessary within its framework context before flagging it.

Read the full file on GitHub · 156 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 156 lines · 37 tokens per session scan B 96cc148ab55b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

simplification-reviewer is an agent published in the GitHub repository vladolaru/claude-code-plugins (8 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 1,962 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks the agent to reveal its instructions). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.