eddmann/agent-toolkit/simplify

Simplify

Find the simplest sufficient implementation: no gold plating, over-architecting, over-engineering or over-testing. Prefer fewer concepts, branches and responsibilities to fewer lines. A clear existing solution may need no changes.

Establish The Scope

Read repository instructions and the shared guidelines. Identify the requested files, commits or PR, including staged and unstaged task work. Establish the intended behavior from the request and relevant contracts. Read nearby callers, tests and architecture before judging an abstraction; keep unrelated work intact.

Simplify

• Look for speculative extensibility, one-use layers without a boundary purpose, duplicate

state or validation, redundant branches and indirection that obscures behavior.

• Reuse established patterns. Keep abstractions that enforce real boundaries or make behavior

easier to understand; inlining everything is not inherently simpler.

• For each candidate, identify its concrete cost, a smaller alternative, behavior to preserve

and verification needed. Independent reviewers can help when available, authorized and useful; keep straightforward reviews local and verify any delegated findings against the code.

• Remove or consolidate tests only when their observable coverage is duplicated or tied to

implementation details. Preserve distinct regression, refusal, failure and integration cases. Do not replace meaningful coverage with mocks merely to make tests shorter.

• Apply worthwhile changes when simplification is requested; assessment-only requests stay

read-only. Preserve public contracts, authorization, isolation, failure handling, observability and operational requirements. Raise uncertain product changes separately.

Run focused checks and repository-required validation. Reuse applicable passing results; avoid repeated suites or new tests that merely restate the refactor.

Finish

Describe the resulting implementation, why it is simpler, validation and remaining uncertainty. Say plainly when no worthwhile simplification was found. Stay within the user's scope and authorization; invoking this skill alone does not request a commit, publication or merge.