# Reduce > Audit over-engineered codebases by factoring layers into live obligations, quotienting redundant distinctions, ablating unearned surface, and normalizing the survivors while preserving required behavior. Use when change latency or agent difficulty comes from frameworks, plugins, DI, codegen, task runners, config indirection, ORMs, GraphQL, monorepo or infrastructure tooling, web stacks, or requests to remove layers. In Actuating composition, classify enforcement sites before challenging candidates that preserve the same invalid region while adding or relocating compensating detection; never remove legitimate derived trust-boundary guards as residue. - Skill: `tkersey/reduce` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 19 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add tkersey/reduce` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/tkersey/reduce/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: AI & ML - Author: tkersey (https://skillmd.com/u/tkersey) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/tkersey/reduce --- # Reduce ## Purpose Act as the architecture **WINNOWING** reviewer. Find abstractions whose live obligation is unproved, expired, moved, duplicated, invalid, or outweighed by their change tax. Recommend a smaller normal form while preserving essential truth. Inside Actuating, return only a material challenge to the current construction; no challenge needs no report. Actuating adjudicates in its active Working Set. Reduce never selects architecture or grants mutation. ## Doctrine ```text WINNOWING = FACTORING -> QUOTIENTING -> ABLATING -> NORMALIZING guard: REFINEMENT-PRESERVING ``` - **Factoring** decomposes a layer into obligations, authorities, inputs, outputs, dependencies, observations, invalid states, escape paths, enforcement roles, and recomposition roles. - **Quotienting** collapses distinctions no required observation can distinguish after congruence checks. - **Ablating** removes, privatizes, collapses, or decommissions factors without a distinct live obligation. - **Normalizing** recomposes the survivors around canonical semantic authority and lower primitives. - **Refinement-preserving** retains required valid behavior while allowing obsolete, duplicated, invalid, or unrequired behavior to disappear. ## Abstraction elevator `$reduce` descends. `$universalist` climbs. They share an altitude map without sharing selection authority. ```text descend lower primitive preserves the live contract climb essential shape is missing; report the gap to Actuating hold a live obligation or proof weakness justifies the layer split remove incidental wrapper while preserving the essential invariant quotient collapse observationally indistinguishable factors ablate remove a discharged factor normalize recompose around one semantic authority ``` In Actuating composition, `climb` reports an `essential-shape-gap`. It does not call Universalist or recursively reopen architecture. Actuating decides whether to request another nomination or block. ## Operating rules 1. Preserve required behavior unless current authority changes it. 2. Preserve invariants, protocols, authorization, data integrity, auditability, public contracts, and external obligations. 3. Use repository evidence first. 4. Treat absent evidence as uncertainty, not deletion authority. 5. Prefer reversible cuts and staged migration. 6. Do not add tools to remove tools unless total complexity falls materially. 7. Every removed factor needs obligation discharge. 8. Every target normal form needs recomposition proof. 9. Keep value and obligation risk separate. 10. Classify enforcement sites before calling them duplication or residue. 11. A candidate that preserves the same invalid region and merely adds, moves, renames, or duplicates compensating detection is dominated when an admissible owner- or cut-level candidate excludes the same family. 12. A derived trust-boundary guard is not dominated merely because primary enforcement exists elsewhere. 13. Do not turn the audit into another durable workflow unless independent durability is explicitly required outside the active Actuating run. ## Enforcement-site classification Classify each implicated check or layer as exactly one primary role: ```text primary-enforcement semantic authority for the law derived-boundary-guard defense in depth or trust-boundary enforcement derived from that authority compensating-guard downstream detection or repair required by permissive admission compatibility-adapter temporary or externally required transition behavior observability-guard monitoring, audit, or diagnosis without semantic admission authority redundant-semantic-owner independently authored implementation of the same law unknown current evidence cannot establish the role ``` Ablate or quotient only after the role and obligation are known. Prefer removing compensating guards and redundant semantic owners after stronger enforcement is proved. Preserve required derived, compatibility, and observability behavior. ## Workflow For standalone audits. Inside Actuating use the composition below directly, applying relevant rules without a duplicate audit table or verdict template. 1. Map the relevant layers, lower primitives, public/wire/storage boundaries, proof surfaces, invariants, invalid states, escape paths, and owner set. 2. Trace at least one real request, change, or command through each major abstraction. 3. Factor each candidate by live obligation: | factor | obligation | authority | enforcement role | inputs/outputs | observations | invalidity excluded | external commitment | recomposition role | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| 4. Classify each obligation `live`, `moved`, `expired`, `duplicated`, `invalid`, or `unknown`. 5. Measure edit, lookup, tool, deploy, hidden-control, and proof tax against evidenced value. 6. Test quotient candidates against an explicit observation set and congruence under accepted operations. 7. For bug-driven work, compare predicate-defined invalid regions, sanctioned admission coverage, frontier or cut coverage, owner sets, escape paths, guard roles, residual checks, and evidence strength. 8. Reject compensating guard movement presented as correctness improvement when the same invalid family still crosses the same sanctioned admission paths. 9. Preserve derived trust-boundary, compatibility, and observability guards unless their distinct obligations are discharged. 10. Check whether apparently removable shape is an essential product, refinement, agreement boundary, free construction, protocol, or external obligation. 11. Classify dominance as `dominant`, `dominated`, `incomparable`, or `unknown`. 12. Return one operator-level verdict: `keep`, `hold`, `factor`, `quotient`, `wrap`, `split`, `collapse`, `ablate`, `privatize`, `decommission`, `normalize`, `replace`, `validate-first`, or `climb`. ## Actuating composition Reuse Actuating's exact candidate, source evidence, and accepted obligations. Return only a factor whose obligation is discharged, an independently maintained truth that can become derived, or a concrete smaller adequate construction that could change selection. Name the affected code and enforcement role, the proposed delete/derive/replace operation, preserved obligations, and the decisive evidence or falsifier. Report material incomparability, an essential-shape gap, or missing proof rather than manufacturing a smaller winner. No material challenge means silence, not a `minimal` report or an additional audit. Merely moving detection while leaving the same invalid state, transition, or escape admissible is not constructional improvement. Preserve derived trust-boundary, compatibility, and observability guards unless their distinct obligations are discharged. Unknown ownership is not deletion authority. Never remove an independent oracle merely because it checks the same law as the producer. This is supporting analysis, not a selection or durable artifact. Use [reduction-certificate.md](references/reduction-certificate.md) only for a standalone audit, explicitly requested certificate, or independently durable handoff outside Actuating. Do not call Universalist or reopen architecture; return a material gap to Actuating. ## Implementation mode When explicitly asked to implement: 1. Hand the material construction challenge to Actuating. 2. Actuating updates its ephemeral Working Set and binds it to the exact current Git head. 3. Implement one coherent reduction seam. 4. Preserve the old surface until the selected proof relation passes unless direct deletion is already proved safe. 5. Run recomposition, invalid-region, admission-coverage, bypass, guard-role, and residue checks. 6. Stop when new evidence changes an obligation, guard role, family predicate, owner set, or target. No Ledger operation, Construction artifact, hotspot register, or one-operation protocol is required. ## Standalone output For a bounded seam, report the affected abstraction, live obligation, proposed operation, preservation evidence, and first safe change. Include material risks and uncertainty. A broad audit may expand the layer map, factorization, candidate comparison, migration, and rollback where they change a decision. Emit RC-v1 only when independently required. Do not repeat the findings in a second summary form.