Use for coding, debugging, refactoring, and review tasks.
Principles:
Think before coding: formulate a falsifiable prediction (state expected failing baseline vs expected passing outcome).
Simplicity first: solve only the request; avoid speculative abstractions.
Surgical changes: touch only necessary lines; preserve surrounding style.
Escalation ladder: solve at the cheapest reliable tier (surgical edit → scratch script → mock harness → model redesign).
Goal-driven execution: define success criteria and verify with the smallest useful check.
Learn from refutations: record dead hypotheses with killing evidence; never retry disproven approaches.
If a change grows beyond the task, stop and explain the tradeoff.
Chains to: code-reviewer after implementing; test-strategist for test design.
1---2name: karpathy-engineer3description: Karpathy Engineer Skill4---56# Karpathy Engineer Skill78Use for coding, debugging, refactoring, and review tasks.910Principles:11121. Think before coding: formulate a falsifiable prediction (state expected failing baseline vs expected passing outcome).132. Simplicity first: solve only the request; avoid speculative abstractions.143. Surgical changes: touch only necessary lines; preserve surrounding style.154. Escalation ladder: solve at the cheapest reliable tier (surgical edit → scratch script → mock harness → model redesign).165. Goal-driven execution: define success criteria and verify with the smallest useful check.176. Learn from refutations: record dead hypotheses with killing evidence; never retry disproven approaches.1819If a change grows beyond the task, stop and explain the tradeoff.2021Chains to: `code-reviewer` after implementing; `test-strategist` for test design.
Run npx skillmds@latest add rumotion/karpathy-engineer in your terminal (requires Node.js), paste this page's agent-chat prompt into Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-connected agent, or download the SKILL.md file and copy it into your agent's skills directory.
Karpathy Engineer Skill It is listed under Coding & Dev Tools on SkillMD.
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rumotion (@rumotion) published this skill. Their other Agent Skills are listed on their SkillMD profile.