preserve-comments

preserve-comments is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Divide-By-0/autolatex. It costs 32 tokens per session (812 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A coding rule that requires existing comments to stay in place when code is edited or refactored. It treats comments describing bugs, platform behavior, and workarounds as part of the project’s working context.

In plain words
What is it for?
It applies when changing this repository’s TypeScript or Apps Script code, especially in Docs, Slides, Common, and Workspace files.
Why use it?
It prevents useful explanations from being removed during cleanup and helps future developers avoid repeating known mistakes.

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/divide-by-0/autolatex/preserve-comments
Any agent
npx skills add Divide-By-0/autolatex --skill preserve-comments
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Divide-By-0/autolatex

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for preserve-comments

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/divide-by-0/autolatex/preserve-comments.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/divide-by-0/autolatex/preserve-comments)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/divide-by-0/autolatex/preserve-comments"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/divide-by-0/autolatex/preserve-comments.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 32 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 812 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 $0.00032 $0.00812
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00406
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00162
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00081

Measured 5d ago against content hash 73d31c44571f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

preserve-comments 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 5d 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.

skills/preserve-comments/SKILL.md · 61 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 61 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Preserve Comments

Existing comments in this codebase are load-bearing context for future agents (and humans). Many describe specific past bugs, race conditions, Apps Script platform quirks, or non-obvious behavior that a casual reader would otherwise "clean up" and re-break. Treat them as part of the source code, not decoration.

Default behavior

  • When editing a block, keep all surrounding comments by default. If a comment no longer matches the code, edit it to match — do not delete it.
  • When refactoring or moving code, move the comments with it. Do not strip them just because the surrounding shape changed.
  • When deleting code, only delete the comments that were specifically about that code. Comments describing nearby invariants, gotchas, or platform behavior stay.
  • When adding a workaround, a magic number, or anything non-obvious, add a comment explaining the why — preferably with // REASON: or // NOTE: prefix so future agents recognize it as intentional context, not noise.

Comments that especially must not be deleted

  • // REASON: and // NOTE: comments — these are deliberate signals from a past agent or maintainer that the line below is non-obvious.
  • Comments referencing prior bugs by symptom (e.g., "without this the sidebar reports no equations found", "0x0D vs 0x0A in Docs vs Slides").
  • Comments describing Apps Script platform behavior (sandbox modes, AuthMode.LIMITED vs FULL, simple vs installable triggers, library developmentMode, runtime cache TTLs).
  • Comments about timing/ordering ("X must happen before Y because…", Utilities.sleep rationales).
  • Comments labeling known-stale or temporary code with cleanup conditions ("remove after Marketplace v8 lands", @deprecated).
  • Comments documenting magic numbers, sentinel return values (-100000, -100001), enum-value-load-bearing notes for cross-file const enum mirroring.

When in doubt

If you're tempted to delete a comment, ask one of:

  • Does this comment describe a behavior that's still true? → keep it as-is.
  • Is the behavior true but the wording stale? → edit the comment to match current reality; preserve the underlying detail.
  • Is the comment plainly wrong now? → edit to a corrected version; do not silently drop the prior context.
  • Is the comment trivially restating the code ("// increment counter")? → safe to drop. But: are you sure it's not subtly disambiguating something? When unsure, keep it.

Read the full file on GitHub · 61 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. 5d ago First seen · 61 lines · 32 tokens per session scan A 73d31c44571f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

preserve-comments is a skill published in the GitHub repository Divide-By-0/autolatex (49 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 32 tokens to every session and 812 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.

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