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.
npx agentmods add skills/iliaal/whetstone/simplifying-codenpx skills add iliaal/whetstone --skill simplifying-codegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/iliaal/whetstoneWhat 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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.00073 | $0.00729 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00036 | $0.00365 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00015 | $0.00146 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00073 |
Grade A, and why
simplifying-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 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 59 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Simplifying Code
Principles
| Principle | Rule |
|---|---|
| Preserve behavior | Output must do exactly what the input did — no silent feature additions or removals. Specifically preserve: async/sync boundaries, error propagation paths, and logging side effects |
| Explicit over clever | Prefer explicit variables over nested expressions. Readable beats compact |
| Simplicity over cleanliness | Prefer straightforward code over pattern-heavy "clean" code. Three similar lines beat a premature abstraction |
| Surgical changes | Touch only what needs simplifying. Match existing style, naming conventions, and formatting of the surrounding code |
| Surface assumptions | Before changing a block, identify what imports it, what it imports, and what tests cover it. Edit dependents in the same pass |
Process
- Read first — understand the full file and its dependents before changing anything
- Identify invariants — what must stay the same? Public API, return types, side effects, error behavior
- Identify targets — find the highest-impact simplification opportunities (see Smell → Fix table)
- Apply in order — control flow → naming → duplication → data shaping → types. Structural changes first, cosmetic last
- Verify — confirm no behavior change: tests pass, types check, imports resolve
Smell → Fix
| Smell | Fix |
|---|---|
| Deep nesting (>2 levels) | Guard clauses with early returns |
| Long function (>30 lines) | Extract into named functions by responsibility |
| Too many parameters (>3) | Group into an options/config object |
| Duplicated block (3+ occurrences) | Extract shared function. Two copies = leave inline; wait for the third |
| Magic numbers/strings | Named constants |
| Complex conditional | Extract to descriptively-named boolean or function |
| Dead code / unreachable branches | Delete entirely — no commented-out code |
Unnecessary else after return |
Remove else, dedent |
AI Slop Removal
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.
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 59 lines · 73 tokens per session scan A 2ba57dce477d
simplifying-code is a skill published in the GitHub repository iliaal/whetstone (32 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 73 tokens to every session and 729 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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