Coding Guidelines

Based on Andrej Karpathy's guidelines, this addresses the habits that trip up LLMs when writing code. It pushes for stating assumptions upfront, keeping implementations minimal without speculative features, making surgical edits that don't refactor unrelated code, and defining verifiable success criteria before starting work. The "think before coding" section is especially pointed about surfacing confusion rather than silently picking an interpretation. Use it when you're actually writing or modifying code, not for architecture discussions or documentation. It's opinionated about simplicity over flexibility, which means you'll need to override it when building genuinely extensible systems.

skills.sh installs: 338
GitHub stars: 7.2K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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$ npx -y skills add tech-leads-club/agent-skills --skill coding-guidelines --agent claude-code

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Coding Guidelines

Behavioral guidelines to reduce common LLM coding mistakes. These principles bias toward caution over speed—for trivial tasks, use judgment.

1. Think Before Coding

Don't assume. Don't hide confusion. Surface tradeoffs.

Before implementing:

State assumptions explicitly. If uncertain, ask.
If multiple interpretations exist, present them—don't pick silently.
If a simpler approach exists, say so. Push back when warranted.
If something is unclear, stop. Name what's confusing. Ask.
Disagree honestly. If the user's approach seems wrong, say so—don't be sycophantic.