What is code-simplification?

A code-cleanup workflow that makes working code easier to read and maintain without changing what it does.

Use it after tests pass, during code review, or when you need to simplify nested logic, long functions, duplication, or avoidable abstractions.

It reduces confusing logic, repeated conditions, unclear names, and unnecessary complexity after the code already works. It also keeps the change small and checks that behavior is preserved.

code-simplification — Skill for Claude Code by tranhieutt

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.

Any agent

npx skills add tranhieutt/software_development_department --skill code-simplification

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tranhieutt/software_development_department

Made for: Claude Code.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/code-simplification/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/code-simplification)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/code-simplification"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/code-simplification/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/code-simplification"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tranhieutt/software_development_department/code-simplification.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 45 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,564 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00045	$0.01564
Opus 5.5	$0.00018	$0.00626
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00009	$0.00313
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00156

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 5cdf54f299f9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, 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 1mo 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 · 213 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 213 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Code Simplification

Purpose

code-simplification reduces code complexity while preserving exact behavior. It is not a feature workflow, not a bug fix workflow, and not permission for drive-by refactors.

The goal is code that is easier to read, review, test, and maintain with the smallest safe diff.

Same behavior.
Less cognitive load.
Fresh verification evidence.

Prefer simplifications that deepen modules instead of flattening behavior across callers. A small interface hiding real complexity is valuable; a wrapper that only moves complexity around is not.

When to Use

Use this workflow when:

The implementation is working and relevant tests pass.
Code review flags readability, complexity, naming, duplication, or avoidable abstraction.
The user asks to simplify, clean up, reduce complexity, or refactor without changing behavior.
A recently changed area has nested logic, long functions, unclear names, or repeated conditionals that make future changes risky.

Do not use this workflow when:

Behavior must change. Use spec-driven-development, test-driven-development, or spec-evolution.
The code is not understood well enough to preserve behavior.
There is no verification path.
The cleanup would touch unrelated files.
The work is a hotfix where cleanup is not required for the fix.

Position in SDD

Preferred placement:

test-driven-development -> code-simplification -> verification-before-completion

Review feedback placement:

code-review -> receiving-code-review -> code-simplification
-> verification-before-completion

Technical-debt placement:

tech-debt identifies issue -> user approves focused cleanup
-> code-simplification

If a simplification requires changing externally visible behavior, API shape, data model, error behavior, timing, permissions, or user flow, stop and route to spec-evolution.

Preconditions

Before editing, all must be true:

Target scope is explicit: file(s), function(s), or review finding.
Intended behavior is known.
Relevant tests, build, lint, typecheck, or manual verification are known.
The current worktree state has been checked.
The simplification is within the approved scope.

Read the full file on GitHub · 213 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.

1mo ago First seen · 213 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A 5cdf54f299f9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

code-simplification is a skill published in the GitHub repository tranhieutt/software_development_department (73 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 1,564 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.

Debugging antigravity-skills brainstorming claude claude-skills harness-engineering human-in-the-loop

serena

Serena code intelligence — LSP-powered symbol navigation, diagnostics, and targeted code surgery. Activate before complex refactors, cross-file analysis, or when graph tools need symbol-level depth.

datit309/supergraph · 40 tokens

diagnose

Structured 6-phase debugging. Build feedback loop first, reproduce deterministically, hypothesize with ranked falsifiable theories, instrument one variable at a time, fix with regression test, cleanup. Use when a bug exists, tests fail unexpectedly, or behavior is wrong and cause is unknown.

datit309/supergraph · 59 tokens

code-simplification