code-simplification

A cleanup skill used after a feature or fix works, focused on reducing complexity, removing unused code, and improving clarity without changing behavior.

In plain words
What is it for?
For safe post-implementation cleanup, including removing dead code, reducing unnecessary abstractions, and checking for duplicate capabilities.
Why use it?
It keeps working code easier to understand while preserving its established behavior. It also requires checks to be run again after cleanup.

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/moberghr/mtk-agent-toolkit/code-simplification
Any agent
npx skills add moberghr/mtk-agent-toolkit --skill code-simplification
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/moberghr/mtk-agent-toolkit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 30 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,322 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 $0.00030 $0.01322
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00661
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00264
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00132

Measured 2d ago against content hash 54d62d065f7b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

code-simplification 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.

.claude/skills/code-simplification/SKILL.md · 127 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 127 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Code Simplification

Overview

Simplify only after behavior is proven. The goal is to reduce complexity, remove dead weight, and improve clarity without broadening scope or changing behavior.

When To Use

  • After a feature or fix is working
  • During a cleanup pass
  • When abstractions are heavier than the current use case needs

When NOT To Use

  • Before correctness is established
  • As cover for a broad refactor unrelated to the task

Workflow

  1. Start from verified working code.
  2. Identify the smallest simplifications that improve readability or reduce dead code.
  3. Remove debug artifacts, dead code, and redundant indirection where safe.
  4. Collapse premature abstractions that are not earning their cost.
  5. If dead code is ambiguous or ownership is unclear, ask before deleting.
  6. Re-run build and tests after the cleanup pass.

Mode: --audit-duplicates

Optional audit that scans the repo for near-duplicate capabilities so they can be consolidated before they multiply. Use the "check before you write" reflex during spec writing; this mode is the periodic sweep that catches duplicates that slipped past it.

  1. Read CODE_INDEX.md at the repo root (template: .claude/references/code-index-template.md). If absent, skip index-guided scanning and note CODE_INDEX.md missing in the report (it is generated during setup-bootstrap).
  2. Extract ALL capability rows from the file you already read in step 1 — this audit needs the full table, so do not enumerate it through per-keyword queries. Use bash scripts/query-code-index.sh find "<keyword>" (prints each matching row prefixed with its ## <Domain> section) only for targeted follow-up lookups, and fall back to grep -i CODE_INDEX.md if the script is absent (repo bootstrapped before v7.17). Group near-duplicates by stem (verb + noun) using simple normalization: lowercase, drop suffixes like Async / _v2 / Impl.
  3. For each cluster of 2+ entries, emit:
    • the capability name
    • all entry points (path:symbol)
    • a one-line recommendation (consolidate / keep separate because …)
  4. Cross-check with the active stack's coding guidelines — the canonical implementation is usually the one that follows local idioms.
  5. Output is a findings list, not edits. The engineer decides which clusters to consolidate; consolidation runs through the normal spec flow if it crosses files.

Read the full file on GitHub · 127 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 · 127 lines · 30 tokens per session scan A 54d62d065f7b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

code-simplification is a skill published in the GitHub repository moberghr/mtk-agent-toolkit (6 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 30 tokens to every session and 1,322 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 2026-08-31.

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

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

agent-host-chat-contributions

Build and review cross-cutting agent-host chat behavior through lifecycle contributions. Use when adding turn lifecycle side effects, prompt or context injection, restored-history transformation, protocol-action observation, or when reviewing changes that add code to AgentSideEffects or AgentService.

microsoft/vscode · 56 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