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ce-simplify-code

Simplify settled, recently changed code for clarity, reuse, quality, and efficiency while preserving behavior. Use after implementation and before review; use ce-debug for bugs.

67

Quality

81%

Does it follow best practices?

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SecuritybySnyk

Passed

No findings from the security scan

The canonical home for this skill is ce-simplify-code in EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin

SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

85%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

A well-structured, behavior-preservation-first workflow with genuine validation and recovery loops, appropriate offloading of the three reviewer rubrics to real one-level-deep reference files. The main improvement opportunity is tightening the host-interop paragraphs (lifecycle, tool-existence, model selection), which are noticeably longer than their operational value.

Suggestions

Condense the host-interop passages (agent lifecycle, blocking-question tool rules, model selection) to their core directives — e.g. 'release review-owned agents before advancing; if a dispatch cannot recover, run that pass inline with the same prompt' — trimming roughly a third of Step 1–2 text.

Add one concrete example of dispatching a reviewer (the call with the persona file content as prompt) to move actionability from specific-instruction to copy-paste-ready.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The body is directive throughout with no teaching of concepts Claude already knows — it gives orders, not lectures ("Do not paraphrase these rubrics from memory", "Each fix must preserve outputs, errors, side effects, and ordering"). The host-interop passages (tool-existence rules, agent lifecycle, model selection) run long with defensive legalese ("Do not infer released capacity from completion or interruption, or invent cleanup operations") that could be trimmed, keeping it below anchor 5.

4 / 5

Actionability

Guidance is concrete and executable: exact git commands ("git diff HEAD"), verbatim file paths for the three reviewer prompts, named dispatch primitives ("Agent/Task in Claude Code, spawn_agent in Codex"), and specific verification commands (typecheck, lint, blast-radius-matched tests). It falls short of anchor 5 only because no example dispatch invocation or literal command sequence is shown — the guidance is specific but at the instruction level rather than copy-paste-ready.

4 / 5

Workflow Clarity

Five clearly sequenced steps with explicit validation checkpoints and feedback loops: stop-and-ask when scope is empty, preflight before launching reviewers, gating ("Proceed only after all three review outcomes are complete"), and a verify step with explicit error recovery ("Fix simplification-caused failures or revert the responsible change; never relax assertions"). This matches anchor 5's sequence + explicit validation + error-recovery profile.

5 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

The SKILL.md is a workflow overview and the three reviewer rubrics are correctly split into one-level-deep, real bundle files (references/personas/code-reuse-reviewer.md, code-quality-reviewer.md, efficiency-reviewer.md, all present and substantive), each clearly signaled with a full relative path and explicit instructions to read and pass them verbatim. Content split and navigation match anchor 5.

5 / 5

Total

18

/

20

Passed

Description

78%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

A tight, well-targeted description in third person that states what, when, and what not (bug routing to ce-debug) in two sentences. Its only weakness is that the when-clause encodes workflow position rather than the natural phrases a user would utter to invoke the skill.

Suggestions

Add user-utterance triggers to the when-clause, e.g. "Use when the user asks to simplify, clean up, or refactor recently changed code", so invocation matches what users actually say.

Include common synonyms such as "refactor" or "clean up" alongside "simplify" to broaden natural keyword coverage.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

The description names concrete action axes — "for clarity, reuse, quality, and efficiency while preserving behavior" — on a defined domain ("settled, recently changed code"). It is not a bare verb like "Processes PDF files" (anchor 3) but stops short of multiple distinct concrete actions like extract/fill/merge (anchor 5).

4 / 5

Completeness

Both parts are present: what ("Simplify settled, recently changed code for clarity, reuse, quality, and efficiency while preserving behavior") and when ("Use after implementation and before review; use ce-debug for bugs"). The when is explicit but workflow-positioned rather than phrased as concrete user-utterance triggers, so it does not fully match anchor 5's "concrete trigger phrases" example.

4 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

Good natural keywords: "simplify", "clarity", "reuse", "quality", "efficiency", "preserving behavior", "recently changed code", "bugs". Common user synonyms like "refactor" or "clean up" are missing, so it falls just below the comprehensive-synonym coverage of anchor 5.

4 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

It carves a clear niche (post-implementation simplification of settled diffs) and explicitly disambiguates from the sibling skill ("use ce-debug for bugs") and from review ("before review"), matching anchor 5's distinct-triggers/minimal-conflict profile. Not anchor 4 because no meaningful overlap risk with related skills is left unaddressed.

5 / 5

Total

17

/

20

Passed

Validation

87%

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation — 14 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

CriteriaDescriptionResult

frontmatter_unknown_keys

Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata

Warning

referenced_paths_exist

Referenced path issues: 3 deeper-than-1-level

Warning

Total

14

/

16

Passed

Repository
crdant/compound-engineering-plugin
Reviewed

Table of Contents

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