principle-minimize-reader-load
About principle-minimize-reader-load
A development skill for reducing the effort readers need to understand code. It focuses on limiting indirection and hidden or mutable state, with a practical test based on how quickly a new reader can trace a value.
Key features
- 01Reduce unnecessary abstraction layers
- 02Prefer interfaces that hide meaningful decisions
- 03Keep mutable state in a narrow scope
- 04State invariants at system boundaries
- 05Evaluate code by reader tracing effort
Use cases
- 01Reviewing a proposed wrapper or adapter
- 02Refactoring pass-through layers
- 03Reducing shared mutable state
- 04Helping new contributors trace data flow
Install
Copy the command and run it in a terminal.
npx skills add https:/After installing, type/principle-minimize-reader-loadin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.
Details
From the project READMEMinimize Reader Load
Maintainability is the work a reader must do to understand code. Track two axes: layers to trace (indirections between the question and the answer) and state to hold (hidden or mutable context the reader must keep in their head). LOC, cyclomatic complexity, and "clean architecture" are proxies. Reader load is the thing that matters. The two axes are independent. A flat file with 50 globals can be as hard to reason about as a 6-layer adapter stack. Guard both. This is the human analog of Guard the Context Window. Working memory is finite for readers too.
- Collapse layers that cost more than they save: wrappers with one caller, adapters with no second implementation, speculative indirection that was never needed. Inline them.
- Make adjacent layers change the abstraction. A layer that repeats the same methods and arguments adds reader load without compression. Collapse pass-through layers.
- Demand interface compression. A broad interface that hides little complexity makes readers learn both the surface and the implementation. Prefer boundaries that hide meaningful decisions.
- Shrink state scope: prefer pure functions (returns over mutations), locals over fields, fields over module state, and module state over globals. Derive instead of sync.
- Name the invariant at the boundary, not in every consumer, so the reader learns it once.
- Before adding a layer or a piece of state, ask: does it reduce reader load elsewhere by at least as much?
The test: can a new reader answer "where does X come from?" and "what can change X?" in under 30 seconds? If not, cut layers or cut state.