code-minimalism

A set of coding rules for writing only the code needed by the requirements and the project's reliability level.

In plain words
What is it for?
Writing new code, reviewing bloat, refactoring, reducing dependencies, and deciding how much structure, validation, testing, and error handling to add.
Why use it?
It helps prevent unnecessary abstractions, dependencies, error handling, and tests while still requiring the basics needed for scripts, tools, or production services.

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/dhananjay625/dev-workflow/code-minimalism
Any agent
npx skills add Dhananjay625/dev-workflow --skill code-minimalism
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Dhananjay625/dev-workflow

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 68 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 816 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 $0.00068 $0.00816
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00408
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00163
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00082

Measured yesterday against content hash 0682d36c4094, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

code-minimalism 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.

plugins/dev-workflow-codex/skills/code-minimalism/SKILL.md · 78 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 78 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Code minimalism

Core principle: every line is a liability. Write only what the spec demands. When requirements change, add then — never predict.

Step 1 — Set the context tier FIRST

Minimalism is calibrated, not absolute. Before writing, classify:

Tier Examples Baseline that is NOT bloat
T1 Throwaway one-off script, exploration, spike Nothing. Tracebacks are the error handling.
T2 Tool CLI/script others will run repeatedly Handle bad input paths + malformed input; usage line on wrong args.
T3 Production service, API, pipeline, library Input validation on all external input; error handling for network/file/timeout; logging on errors and state changes; nulls/duplicates/empty handled in data-touching code; type hints on public interfaces.

The tier baseline is part of the spec even when unwritten. Everything ABOVE the tier baseline needs explicit spec justification. Everything below it is negligence, not minimalism.

Step 2 — Write only what passes these gates

Before each addition, one of these must be true, else delete:

  1. The spec explicitly requires it.
  2. The tier baseline (table above) requires it.
  3. Its absence causes a failure that WILL occur in normal use.

Never write: features "for later", scaling beyond stated load, abstraction layers for imagined reuse, config keys for values that never change, comments restating the code, docstrings on obvious functions, tests for code that cannot fail.

Step 3 — Structure rules

  • Inline until 3 uses: no helper, class, or util for a single call site.
  • No class where a function works; no function where an expression works.
  • Stdlib first: add a dependency only if it replaces >~30 lines of nontrivial code you'd otherwise maintain, or provides correctness you can't easily get (crypto, timezone math, parsing standards).
  • Flat until it hurts: no folder with 1–2 files; no layer directories (controllers/services/models) for a handful of endpoints.
  • Comment WHY (chosen approach, workaround, assumption), never WHAT.
  • Split only on real pressure: function doing 3+ distinct things, file >~500 lines, 4+ branch conditionals.

Read the full file on GitHub · 78 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 78 lines · 68 tokens per session scan A 0682d36c4094

Subscribe to this mod's changes

code-minimalism is a skill published in the GitHub repository Dhananjay625/dev-workflow (2 stars, last pushed 20d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 68 tokens to every session and 816 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.

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