code-simplification

A code-refactoring guide for making working software easier to read, understand, change, and debug without changing what it does.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it after a feature works and its tests pass, during code review, or when simplifying code written under time pressure.
Why use it?
It helps remove unnecessary complexity, duplication, deep nesting, long functions, and unclear names from code that has become difficult to maintain.

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/thangchung/agent-engineering-experiment/code-simplification
Any agent
npx skills add thangchung/agent-engineering-experiment --skill code-simplification
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/thangchung/agent-engineering-experiment

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 51 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,999 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00051 $0.02999
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.01499
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00600
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00300

Measured 2d ago against content hash 509ceff1754e, 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to code-simplification — 1 line differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

foundry-agentfx/.github/skills/code-simplification/SKILL.md · 331 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 331 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Code Simplification

Inspired by the Claude Code Simplifier plugin. Adapted here as a model-agnostic, process-driven skill for any AI coding agent.

Overview

Simplify code by reducing complexity while preserving exact behavior. The goal is not fewer lines — it's code that is easier to read, understand, modify, and debug. Every simplification must pass a simple test: "Would a new team member understand this faster than the original?"

When to Use

  • After a feature is working and tests pass, but the implementation feels heavier than it needs to be
  • During code review when readability or complexity issues are flagged
  • When you encounter deeply nested logic, long functions, or unclear names
  • When refactoring code written under time pressure
  • When consolidating related logic scattered across files
  • After merging changes that introduced duplication or inconsistency

When NOT to use:

  • Code is already clean and readable — don't simplify for the sake of it
  • You don't understand what the code does yet — comprehend before you simplify
  • The code is performance-critical and the "simpler" version would be measurably slower
  • You're about to rewrite the module entirely — simplifying throwaway code wastes effort

The Five Principles

1. Preserve Behavior Exactly

Don't change what the code does — only how it expresses it. All inputs, outputs, side effects, error behavior, and edge cases must remain identical. If you're not sure a simplification preserves behavior, don't make it.

ASK BEFORE EVERY CHANGE:
→ Does this produce the same output for every input?
→ Does this maintain the same error behavior?
→ Does this preserve the same side effects and ordering?
→ Do all existing tests still pass without modification?

2. Follow Project Conventions

Simplification means making code more consistent with the codebase, not imposing external preferences. Before simplifying:

Read the full file on GitHub · 331 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 · 331 lines · 51 tokens per session scan A 509ceff1754e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

code-simplification is a skill published in the GitHub repository thangchung/agent-engineering-experiment (24 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 51 tokens to every session and 2,999 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to code-simplification, differing in 1 line, and is treated as a copy.

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