clean-code

A set of practical coding standards focused on simple designs, clear names, small focused functions, reuse, and avoiding unused work or unnecessary comments.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing or reviewing code, choosing names, organizing functions, removing duplication, and avoiding over-engineered solutions.
Why use it?
It helps keep code easier to read and maintain by limiting complexity and making each part's purpose clear.

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/diillson/chatcli/clean-code
Any agent
npx skills add diillson/chatcli --skill clean-code
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/diillson/chatcli

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 21 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,678 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 $0.00021 $0.01678
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00839
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00336
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00168

Measured yesterday against content hash ac3bae08f75a, 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 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:

.agent/skills/clean-code/SKILL.md · 202 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 202 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Clean Code - Pragmatic AI Coding Standards

CRITICAL SKILL - Be concise, direct, and solution-focused.


Core Principles

Principle Rule
SRP Single Responsibility - each function/class does ONE thing
DRY Don't Repeat Yourself - extract duplicates, reuse
KISS Keep It Simple - simplest solution that works
YAGNI You Aren't Gonna Need It - don't build unused features
Boy Scout Leave code cleaner than you found it

Naming Rules

Element Convention
Variables Reveal intent: userCount not n
Functions Verb + noun: getUserById() not user()
Booleans Question form: isActive, hasPermission, canEdit
Constants SCREAMING_SNAKE: MAX_RETRY_COUNT

Rule: If you need a comment to explain a name, rename it.


Function Rules

Rule Description
Small Max 20 lines, ideally 5-10
One Thing Does one thing, does it well
One Level One level of abstraction per function
Few Args Max 3 arguments, prefer 0-2
No Side Effects Don't mutate inputs unexpectedly

Code Structure

Pattern Apply
Guard Clauses Early returns for edge cases
Flat > Nested Avoid deep nesting (max 2 levels)
Composition Small functions composed together
Colocation Keep related code close

AI Coding Style

Situation Action
User asks for feature Write it directly
User reports bug Fix it, don't explain
No clear requirement Ask, don't assume

Anti-Patterns (DON'T)

❌ Pattern ✅ Fix
Comment every line Delete obvious comments
Helper for one-liner Inline the code
Factory for 2 objects Direct instantiation
utils.ts with 1 function Put code where used
"First we import..." Just write code
Deep nesting Guard clauses
Magic numbers Named constants
God functions Split by responsibility

Read the full file on GitHub · 202 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 · 202 lines · 21 tokens per session scan A ac3bae08f75a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

clean-code is a skill published in the GitHub repository diillson/chatcli (89 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 1,678 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 2026-08-30.