Surgical Task Guidelines
Purpose
Keep execution scoped, simple, and verifiable for coding, debugging, review, refactor, and file-editing tasks.
Routing
- Use when: Use for coding, debugging, review, refactor, build, test, release, or file-editing tasks where scope control and verification matter.
- Do not use when: Do not use for pure brainstorming, broad strategy, or requests where the user explicitly asks for expansive ideation rather than execution.
- Outputs: A focused task result with assumptions, scoped changes, verification evidence, and unrelated issues kept separate.
- Success criteria: The result satisfies the user's request with minimal relevant changes, no drive-by edits, and clear verification evidence.
Trigger Examples
Positive
- Use the karpathy-guidelines skill for this request.
- Fix this bug without refactoring unrelated modules.
- Review this patch and point out overcomplicated or unnecessary changes.
- Refactor this file surgically while preserving behavior.
- Implement this feature and verify the narrowest relevant test passes.
Negative
- Brainstorm ten moonshot product directions.
- Write a broad strategy memo with multiple speculative options.
- Do not use karpathy-guidelines for unrelated requests.
- This is conceptual discussion only; no tool workflow is needed.
Runtime Prompt
- Current runtime prompt length: 621 characters.
- Runtime prompt is defined directly in
../karpathy-guidelines.json.