coding-principles

A reference guide for making careful coding decisions, such as clarifying uncertainty, choosing simple solutions, and limiting changes to what is needed.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to decide when to ask questions, challenge a requirement, simplify an implementation, or make a small targeted change.
Why use it?
It reduces unnecessary code, hidden assumptions, and broad changes that can introduce new problems.

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/sefaertunc/worclaude/coding-principles
Any agent
npx skills add sefaertunc/Worclaude --skill coding-principles
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sefaertunc/Worclaude

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 584 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 $0.00022 $0.00584
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.00292
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00117
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00058

Measured 2d ago against content hash 06b03306f9bd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

coding-principles 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/coding-principles/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.

Coding Principles

Reference card. Depth and examples live in the linked skills — this file consolidates the rules, not the rationale.

1. Think Before Coding

Don't assume. Don't hide confusion. Surface tradeoffs.

  • State assumptions explicitly. If uncertain, ask.
  • If multiple interpretations exist, present them — don't pick silently.
  • If a simpler approach exists, say so. Push back when warranted.
  • If something is unclear, stop. Name what's confusing. Ask.

See prompt-engineering/SKILL.md for eliciting quality and writing specs.

2. Simplicity First

Minimum code that solves the problem. Nothing speculative.

  • No features beyond what was asked. No abstractions for single-use code.
  • No "flexibility" or "configurability" that wasn't requested.
  • No error handling for impossible scenarios.
  • If you wrote 200 lines and it could be 50, rewrite it.

When NOT to simplify: hot paths, stable legacy, framework boilerplate, security-critical code, code you don't fully understand. When in doubt, leave it — a working system is more valuable than a clean one. See the code-simplifier agent and /refactor-clean command.

3. Surgical Changes

Touch only what you must. Every changed line must trace to the request.

  • Don't "improve" adjacent code, comments, or formatting.
  • Don't refactor things that aren't broken.
  • Match existing style, even if you'd do it differently.
  • Remove imports/variables YOUR changes made unused. Leave pre-existing dead code unless asked.
  • Never combine cleanup with feature work.

See git-conventions/SKILL.md for style matching and the /refactor-clean command for scope.

4. Goal-Driven Execution

Define success criteria up front. Loop until verified.

Transform tasks into verifiable goals:

  • "Add validation" → "Write tests for invalid inputs, then make them pass"
  • "Fix the bug" → "Write a failing test that reproduces it, then make it pass"
  • "Refactor X" → "Ensure tests pass before and after"

Close the feedback loop BEFORE committing: change → verify → commit. Not: commit → discover it's broken.

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. 2d ago First seen · 61 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 06b03306f9bd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

coding-principles is a skill published in the GitHub repository sefaertunc/Worclaude (4 stars, last pushed 23d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 584 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 2026-08-31.