Karpathy Guidelines

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.