Codebase Simplification & Maintenance Guide
This skill provides guidelines on how to keep repositories clean, avoid over-engineering, and maintain high developer velocity.
1. Local Branch-First Development
main: ``bash git switch -c <developer-or-agent>/main/<feature-name> ` Never develop or modify code directly on main`.2. Core Principles
- Do not create interfaces or wrapper layers that have only a single implementation unless required for mocking in tests.
- Prefer straightforward, readable standard library code over heavy external frameworks.
- Never call os.Getenv or process.env in arbitrary component or handler files.
- All environment access must go through dedicated central modules (e.g. config/env.ts, config/settings.py, config/config.go).
- Remove unused functions, structs, imports, scripts, and commented-out code during every refactoring pass.
- Never drop or truncate production tables.
- Always write idempotent migrations (CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS).
- Avoid creating custom scripts when existing verified CLI tools (pnpm, uv, go, docker) already provide native solutions.