Pr1m4lc0d3 KISS — Clean Edits
Three reflexes that fire at the moment of an edit. They prevent the two commonest forms of breakage: bloat-by-accretion and change-by-overreach.
1. Extract on touch — make file size visible before you add
Bloat accretes one reasonable append at a time, because at the moment you add a method the file's existing size is off-screen. Put it on-screen:
Before adding any member to an existing file, state its current line count.
| File is... | Do |
|---|---|
| under the review tier | Append normally |
| past the extract tier | Extract first — new code goes in a new file/section, not appended |
| past the hard stop | New code goes in a new file; flag the host for splitting |
A positive required step, not a prohibition: you're not banned from large files, you're required
to look before you grow one. (Tiers: kiss-modularity. Where things live: kiss-map.)
Dispatch chains are not an exemption
"It's one long if/switch, so a new branch has to live in the method" is a common false exit. The
branch stays in the method — its body does not. Extract the body into a new file/section,
leave a one-line call:
if (action == "summarize") return SummarizeRound(args); // stays inline
// SummarizeRound lives in a new section/file — 40 lines out of the monolith
"The branch must be inline" is not "the logic must be inline." Claiming "no clean seam" when a body-extraction is available does not satisfy this reflex.
2. Surgical edits — every changed line traces to the request
- Don't "improve" adjacent code, comments, or formatting you weren't asked to touch.
- Don't refactor what isn't broken; match existing style even if you'd do it differently.
- Remove only the imports/variables your own change orphaned; mention pre-existing dead code, don't delete it.
- The test: every changed line traces directly to the request. If you can't trace it, drop it.
(This is the inner loop of
kiss-blast-radius.)
3. YAGNI — write nothing speculative
- No features beyond what was asked; no abstraction for single-use code; no configurability nobody requested; no error handling for impossible states.
- If 200 lines could be 50, write the 50.
- Ask: "Would a senior engineer call this overcomplicated?" If yes, simplify before moving on.
Why this form
The extract-on-touch reflex is built test-first: a baseline showed fresh agents grow an over-budget file with zero awareness of its size — the failure is omission, not defiance. So the fix is a required measurement, not a ban: a prohibition gets negotiated away ("my change is small and correct"); a measurement can't ("did I state the line count before editing, or not?").