refactor

A code-review workflow for finding technical debt, meaning code that is difficult to maintain or likely to cause problems later, and planning focused improvements.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review a codebase, assess refactoring risks, document before-and-after changes, and create tasks for larger refactors.
Why use it?
It helps locate duplication, overly complex code, dead code, tight connections between components, and other maintainability issues before they become larger problems.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/ashtonian/llm-init/refactor
Any agent
npx skills add ashtonian/llm-init --skill refactor
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ashtonian/llm-init

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 14 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,379 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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 $0.00014 $0.01379
Opus 5 $0.00007 $0.00690
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00276
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00138

Measured 2d ago against content hash f9fc17e8ecae, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

refactor 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 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.

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.

templates/.claude/skills/refactor/SKILL.md · 150 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 150 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Refactoring Skill

Structured workflow for identifying refactoring opportunities, assessing impact, and executing safe refactors that preserve behavior. Produces a refactoring plan with before/after examples and generates task files for large refactors.

Workflow

Step 1: Identify Refactoring Opportunities

Scan the codebase for common refactoring signals:

Signal Detection Method
Code duplication Search for repeated patterns across files (similar function signatures, copy-paste blocks)
High complexity Functions exceeding 60 lines, deeply nested conditionals (>3 levels), high cyclomatic complexity
Code smells Long parameter lists (>4 params), god objects, feature envy, primitive obsession
Naming issues Inconsistent naming conventions, misleading names, abbreviations without context
Dead code Unused exports, unreachable branches, commented-out code blocks
Tight coupling Concrete type dependencies where interfaces should be used, circular imports
Missing abstractions Repeated patterns that could be extracted into shared utilities or interfaces

For each opportunity found, record:

  • File and line range: Exact location
  • Category: Which signal it matches
  • Severity: High (blocks new features), Medium (increases maintenance cost), Low (cosmetic)
  • Estimated effort: Small (< 1 hour), Medium (1-4 hours), Large (> 4 hours)

Output: Refactoring opportunity inventory sorted by severity then effort.

Step 2: Impact Analysis

For each candidate refactoring, assess:

  1. Blast radius: How many files/packages are affected?
  2. Test coverage: Are the affected areas well-tested? Check coverage reports.
  3. Active development: Is anyone currently working on these files? Check recent git history.
  4. Risk level: Could this break existing behavior?
Impact Matrix:
| Refactoring | Files Affected | Test Coverage | Risk | Priority |
|-------------|---------------|---------------|------|----------|
| Extract X   | 3             | 85%           | Low  | High     |
| Rename Y    | 12            | 40%           | Med  | Medium   |

Read the full file on GitHub · 150 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 · 150 lines · 14 tokens per session scan A f9fc17e8ecae

Subscribe to this mod's changes

refactor is a skill published in the GitHub repository ashtonian/llm-init (2 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 14 tokens to every session and 1,379 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

obra/superpowers · 37 tokens

auto-perf-optimize

Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.

microsoft/vscode · 62 tokens

chat-perf

Run chat perf benchmarks and memory leak checks against the local dev build or any published VS Code version. Use when investigating chat rendering regressions, validating perf-sensitive changes to chat UI, or checking for memory leaks in the chat response pipeline.

microsoft/vscode · 51 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens