/karpathy-guidelines
Surgical execution guardrails for coding, debugging, review, and refactor tasks
$ npx -y skills add CoWork-OS/CoWork-OS --skill karpathy-guidelines --agent claude-codeHow it fires
How this skill gets triggered: by you, by Claude, or both.
- Fires itselfAuto-invocation. Claude auto-loads it when your prompt matches the work.Auto-invocation is when the right skill fires by itself at the right moment, driven by a FLOW.md router and a hook, instead of you invoking it by name. It is the difference between a skill being installed and a skill actually getting used.Read the full definition →
- You can call itInvoke it directly when you want it.
- Slash command
/karpathy-guidelines
Context preview
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Surgical execution guardrails for coding, debugging, review, and refactor tasks
SKILL.md
karpathy-guidelines.SKILL.mdname: karpathy-guidelines
description: "Surgical execution guardrails for coding, debugging, review, and refactor tasks"
Surgical Task Guidelines
Purpose
Keep execution scoped, simple, and verifiable for coding, debugging, review, refactor, and file-editing tasks.
Routing
- Use when: Use for coding, debugging, review, refactor, build, test, release, or file-editing tasks where scope control and verification matter.
- Do not use when: Do not use for pure brainstorming, broad strategy, or requests where the user explicitly asks for expansive ideation rather than execution.
- Outputs: A focused task result with assumptions, scoped changes, verification evidence, and unrelated issues kept separate.
- Success criteria: The result satisfies the user's request with minimal relevant changes, no drive-by edits, and clear verification evidence.
Trigger Examples
Positive
- Use the karpathy-guidelines skill for this request.
- Fix this bug without refactoring unrelated modules.
- Review this patch and point out overcomplicated or unnecessary changes.
- Refactor this file surgically while preserving behavior.
- Implement this feature and verify the narrowest relevant test passes.
Negative
- Brainstorm ten moonshot product directions.
- Write a broad strategy memo with multiple speculative options.
- Do not use karpathy-guidelines for unrelated requests.
- This is conceptual discussion only; no tool workflow is needed.
Runtime Prompt
- Current runtime prompt length: 621 characters.
- Runtime prompt is defined directly in `../karpathy-guidelines.json`.
Read more
name: karpathy-guidelines description: "Surgical execution guardrails for coding, debugging, review, and refactor tasks"
Surgical Task Guidelines
Purpose
Keep execution scoped, simple, and verifiable for coding, debugging, review, refactor, and file-editing tasks.
Routing
- Use when: Use for coding, debugging, review, refactor, build, test, release, or file-editing tasks where scope control and verification matter.
- Do not use when: Do not use for pure brainstorming, broad strategy, or requests where the user explicitly asks for expansive ideation rather than execution.
- Outputs: A focused task result with assumptions, scoped changes, verification evidence, and unrelated issues kept separate.
- Success criteria: The result satisfies the user's request with minimal relevant changes, no drive-by edits, and clear verification evidence.
Trigger Examples
Positive
- Use the karpathy-guidelines skill for this request.
- Fix this bug without refactoring unrelated modules.
- Review this patch and point out overcomplicated or unnecessary changes.
- Refactor this file surgically while preserving behavior.
- Implement this feature and verify the narrowest relevant test passes.
Negative
- Brainstorm ten moonshot product directions.
- Write a broad strategy memo with multiple speculative options.
- Do not use karpathy-guidelines for unrelated requests.
- This is conceptual discussion only; no tool workflow is needed.
Runtime Prompt
- Current runtime prompt length: 621 characters.
- Runtime prompt is defined directly in `../karpathy-guidelines.json`.
Local-first personal agentic OS and everything app for coding, knowledge work, web design, automations, and artifacts.
Repo: CoWork-OS/CoWork-OS
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