Breaking Driven

Breaking-Driven Development

Patching an accreted subsystem preserves its shape. Every fix threads through the structure that caused the bug, and the structure survives the fix. This skill stops patching. Tear the implementation out, state what it owes, and build the replacement from that statement — not from the wreckage.

Bloat is the trigger, and derivation is the method. You do not know the right shape when you start; you derive it. What the old code did that the derived contract never names is residue, and residue gets cut.

One veto point: a boundary surface — something outside this repo depends on — stops for an explicit yes before it is cut. Everything interior gets demolished without asking.

Scope

Repo-wide is opt-in, never inferred.

• A named path, or a target identified in the request, is the whole job. Start at step 2 on it.
• A bare invocation, or wording that asks for a sweep, surveys the repo and works the ranked list.

"This module is bloated" demolishes that module. Escalating a named grievance into a whole-tree campaign is this skill's worst failure, and trigger phrasing alone cannot tell the two apart — so any identifiable target scopes to itself.

A repo-wide run is a campaign, not an edit: one target at a time, each landing as its own atomic commit. Half-demolished is the forbidden state. Finish a target or revert it; never ship the middle.

Workflow

1. Pick the target. A named path or identified target goes straight to step 2. Survey only on explicit repo-wide intent, ranking candidates by bloat signal — size, duplication, indirection depth, branch density — then work the list in order. Done when: the target set matches what was asked for, and any ranking names the signal behind each candidate.

2. Classify the surface. Inventory consumers. Mark interior (every caller in-tree, nothing persisted or shipped) or boundary (public API, wire or on-disk format, config running in someone else's deployment, plugin point, anything a version was promised against).

   Interior is a conclusion, not a default. Interior code turns boundary-like through deployment, data migration, and undocumented automation. Every consumer channel static analysis cannot resolve — reflection, string dispatch, generated code, external integrations, operator runbooks — carries boundary class until evidence or an explicit yes moves it. Skip this and step 5's gate is defeated by exactly the consumers nobody could enumerate. Done when: every consumer is named and classified, with unresolved channels listed by name and holding boundary class.

3. State the contract, then derive blind. Write down what the target owes its callers, sourced from call-site usage, existing tests, and the public signature — never from the target's own internals. Build the replacement from that statement alone. Reaching into the old structure for the contract is how the accretion reproduces itself under fresh names. Done when: the contract is written from consumer-side evidence, and the new implementation builds and stands on its own.

4. Audit the divergence. Now walk the old implementation function by function — branch by branch within a single function — and for each behavior, name where it lives in the replacement or classify it residue. Read for behavior rather than structure: branches, guards, early returns, side effects, ordering guarantees, error and failure semantics, state transitions.

   This audit is the only backstop in the method. Nothing executable proves the replacement equivalent, so a behavior you never read is a feature deleted by accident — which is why the walk is exhaustive rather than impressionistic. Done when: every unit of the old implementation has been walked, and every behavior found is classified essential (fold it in) or residue (cut it) with a one-line reason. Performance characteristics are out of scope — benchmark separately when the target is hot.

5. Gate the boundary. Present every surface marked boundary in step 2 and get an explicit answer before touching it. Interior surfaces need no ask; demolish them. Done when: every boundary surface carries a recorded yes (cut it) or no (keep it permanently — it is contract, not residue). None are cut on silence, and none are cut after a no.

6. Cut the residue and land it. Delete the old implementation and every surface reachable only from it. Run the test suite the repo already has, and cover every behavior step 4 classified essential that had no test. Commit this target atomically before starting the next. Done when: a search for every symbol classified residue returns nothing, each essential behavior has a test, no unused imports/deps/types/files survive, the repo's verifier is green, and no target sits half-demolished. Surfaces kept essential or refused at the boundary gate keep their identifiers — they are the contract, not leftovers.

When NOT to Apply

• Compat shims, feature flags, version gates, deprecation markers — the contract is deliberately changing. That is refactor-break-compat.
• A single function, or local dead fields and wrappers in code you are already editing — cleanup-codebase.
• Debug leftovers, placeholder bodies, swallowed errors — deslop.
• Restraint on code not yet written — minimalism-driven.
• A target whose contract cannot be stated: a god-object with no coherent responsibility. Derivation needs something to derive from. Split it first, then come back.

Anti-patterns

• Reading the old structure while deriving. It comes back with new names and the same shape. State the contract, then look away.
• Skipping the divergence audit. Derivation alone is the rewrite that silently drops edge cases — and here it is the only check standing.
• Calling a target interior on an empty search. An empty grep over dynamic dispatch is not evidence. Unresolved means boundary.
• Cutting a boundary surface on silence, or after a no. The one place this skill stops. Stopping is the design, not hedging.
• Starting the next target with one half-demolished. Land it or revert it.
• Escalating a named target into a repo-wide sweep. Scope equals the ask.
• Writing an adapter from the new shape back to the old. That is the corpse climbing out of the grave you dug.

Validation Gates

Exit Codes