AnastasiyaW Deslop
Review only the branch diff against its intended base and remove noise that does not belong in the local code style. Keep the behavior and public contract unchanged unless a clear, separately verified bug is fixed.
Review Targets
- comments that narrate obvious code or contradict local conventions;
- defensive checks or catch blocks abnormal for a trusted path;
any, unsafe casts, or optionality used only to silence a type checker;- deep nesting that can be made clearer with early returns or a named helper;
- one-off wrappers, flags, and branches inconsistent with the surrounding module;
- C++ ownership or error-handling scaffolding that is redundant with the established RAII/contract boundary.
Workflow
- Inspect the base, diff, local style, tests, and ownership boundaries.
- Classify each candidate as noise, a clear bug, or an intentional contract.
- Remove only confirmed noise in a focused edit.
- Run the narrow relevant checks and inspect the final diff.
- If the structure needs a real redesign, stop deslop and use
refactoring-safely,architecture-quality, orthermo-nuclear-code-quality-review.
Do not delete comments that explain a non-obvious invariant, security boundary, ABI constraint, workaround with an owner, or externally required behavior.
Gotchas
- Shorter code is not automatically clearer; preserve names and boundaries that carry domain meaning.
- A broad formatter run can hide behavior changes and is not deslop proof.
- Removing a defensive check without proving the trusted-path invariant can turn cleanup into a regression.
- In C++, exception and ownership code may look repetitive while protecting an ABI or lifetime boundary; inspect callers before removing it.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Cleanup changes a test result | Candidate was behavior, not noise | Revert that candidate and isolate the real contract |
| Diff is too broad | Tool ran over the whole tree | Restrict review to the branch diff and restore unrelated files |
| Comment seems redundant but explains a constraint | Context is outside the file | Read the owning docs/tests before changing it |
| Code remains structurally tangled | Deslop is the wrong scope | Escalate to a planned refactor with characterization tests |
Source
Adapted from Cursor Team Kit's MIT-licensed deslop workflow:
https://github.com/cursor/plugins/tree/main/cursor-team-kit/skills/deslop