clean-code-skills clean-code.instructions.md

A set of coding instructions for keeping code understandable and consistently organized. It covers design boundaries, file placement, dependencies, project context, and review workflows.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing, editing, reviewing, or refactoring code, especially during architecture work, project setup, or larger refactors.
Why use it?
It gives developers a repeatable way to decide where code belongs and how changes should be checked. This helps reduce tangled dependencies and inconsistent project structure.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

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 instructions/btseee/clean-code-skills/clean-code
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/btseee/clean-code-skills

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 1,276 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,276 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. 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 $0.01276 $0.01276
Opus 5 $0.00638 $0.00638
Sonnet 5 $0.00255 $0.00255
Haiku 4.5 $0.00128 $0.00128

Measured yesterday against content hash 1904cae3215c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

clean-code-skills clean-code.instructions.md scanned grade A with 0 findings 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 yesterday.

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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

3 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

.github/instructions/clean-code.instructions.md · 71 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 71 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Clean-Code Instructions

Apply these rules to every file type unless a more specific instruction file overrides them.

Clean Code Rules (clean-code-skills)

These rules govern all code you write, edit, review, test, or refactor in this project, in any language or framework. They are the non-negotiable summary; the full skill has the reasoning, the workflows, and the checklists.

Read the skill before non-trivial work. First existing path wins: .claude/skills/clean-code/SKILL.md, .agents/skills/clean-code/SKILL.md, .github/skills/clean-code/SKILL.md, skills/clean-code/SKILL.md. Its references/ folder holds the depth: architecture.md, principles.md, smell-triage.md, session-protocol.md, new-project.md, project-refactor.md, audit-report.md.

Load project context first. Read .clean/context.json, .clean/architecture.md, .clean/decisions.md, and .clean/ledger.md if they exist, then the project's own instruction files. A recorded decision is settled. A declared architecture outranks your instincts. Project instructions outrank this block.

Work Loop

  1. Frame: name the behavior change, the assumptions that affect design, the smallest scope, and the check that will prove it.
  2. Read first: nearby code, naming, tests, error style, framework idioms. Search for an existing implementation before writing anything new.
  3. Place: decide which unit owns the responsibility and which side of which boundary it sits on.
  4. Edit surgically: smallest diff that solves the task; targeted edits over whole-file regeneration; remove what your change orphaned; no unrelated changes.
  5. Verify: run the narrowest meaningful check, then broader checks as risk demands. Never claim success without evidence.
  6. Review the diff: dead code, duplication, mixed responsibilities, wrong-way dependencies, swallowed errors, wrong-place files, missing tests.

Dependency Direction

  • Source dependencies point inward, toward higher-level policy. Nothing in an inner layer may name anything in an outer one — no class, function, variable, annotation, or data format.
  • Business rules are the highest level. The database, web, UI, framework, and delivery mechanism are details. When policy needs something from a detail, declare the interface on the policy side and implement it outside.
  • All SQL stays in the data-access layer. Rows, result sets, ORM types, and framework request or response objects never travel inward — pass a simple structure shaped for the inner side.
  • Never derive a business object from a framework base class or annotate one. Keep dependency-injection wiring in main.
  • Keep the component graph acyclic. Do not add a boundary, layer, or service you cannot justify now.

Read the full file on GitHub · 71 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. yesterday First seen · 71 lines · 1,276 tokens per session scan A 1904cae3215c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

clean-code-skills clean-code.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository btseee/clean-code-skills (7 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,276 tokens to every session, about $0.0064 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.