jerseycheese KISS — Keep It Minimal
Purpose
Given a diff or staged changes, strip everything down to the smallest set of modifications that achieves the stated goal. Nothing more.
What to remove or simplify
- Refactors or restructuring not required by the fix
- Variable/function renames that aren't part of the stated goal
- Comment additions or edits beyond the changed lines
- Import reordering or cleanup
- Whitespace normalization unrelated to the change
- "While I'm here" fixes — flag these as separate tasks instead
- New abstractions or helpers not required by the change
- Extra test coverage beyond what directly tests the change
- Style or formatting changes outside the modified logic
What to simplify (overengineering)
- Constants or data structures that wrap what could be inline literals
- Helper functions called only once — inline them
- Intermediate variables that just rename what they hold
- Multi-step logic that can be a single expression
- Generic/parameterized code where one concrete case exists
- Abstractions built for hypothetical future callers
- Overly defensive null checks or fallbacks for impossible states
- Tests with elaborate setup for simple assertions — simplify the fixture
Process
- Identify the stated goal — what is this change trying to do? One sentence.
- Read the full diff —
git diff HEADorgit diff --staged - For each hunk, ask: is this hunk strictly required to achieve the goal? If no, mark it for removal.
- Separate the extras — list anything removed with a one-line reason; offer to file each as a standalone task.
- Apply the trimmed diff — edit files to remove the extras, keeping only what's necessary.
- Verify — run tests on the trimmed change to confirm it still achieves the goal.
Rules
- Prefer editing one line over editing a function; prefer editing a function over editing a file.
- A change that touches N files should touch N-1 files if possible.
- If in doubt about whether something is necessary, remove it and note it.
- Never introduce new patterns or dependencies in a KISS pass.
- Flagged extras go into a list at the end — never silently dropped.