Kaakati Refactor
This skill routes to the refactor-specialist agent — a senior refactoring engineer (Opus) that transforms messy code into clean, maintainable systems without breaking existing behavior.
When to Use
- Reducing technical debt in identified hotspots
- Extracting reusable patterns from duplicated code
- Restructuring modules that violate Single Responsibility
- Decomposing large functions (>30 lines) or classes
- Migrating legacy code to current architecture patterns
- Performing large-scale codebase transformations
Safety Rules (Non-Negotiable)
- NEVER refactor without tests. If tests do not exist, the agent writes characterization tests first.
- Each step is atomic. One Extract Method, one Rename, one Move — never mixed. Safe to revert individually.
- Tests run after every step. If a test fails, the change is reverted and investigated.
- Public API contracts are preserved unless the explicit goal is to change them.
- Refactoring and feature work are never combined in the same PR.
What the Agent Does
- Identifies code smells — Long Methods, God Objects, Feature Envy, Data Clumps, Duplicated Code, Dead Code
- Verifies test coverage — runs suite, identifies gaps, writes characterization tests if needed
- Plans incremental steps — ordered by risk (rename before restructure before rearchitect)
- Applies Fowler's patterns — Extract Method/Class, Move Method, Replace Conditional with Polymorphism, Introduce Parameter Object
- Reports after each step — what changed, why, test results
See agents/refactor-specialist.md for the full refactoring protocol and code smell catalog.