dev-skills

Appearance

Namecode-design
DescriptionCode design principles that need human judgment, not lint — intention-revealing names and contents, abstraction levels. Automatically invoke when naming or restructuring code for readability.

Code Design ​

Design-quality rules for code that needs human judgment to apply, not a linter to enforce.

How this differs from code-style ​

Code Style covers mechanical rules — indentation, line length, single quotes, trailing commas, no-var. Every rule there has a corresponding AST or line check in code-style/lint/. The workflow is "run the linter, fix one problem, repeat."

code-design covers judgment rules — naming, abstraction levels, function decomposition, where to draw module boundaries. No linter catches processData vs sumPositiveAmounts, or "this body mixes altitudes." A human has to read the code and decide whether it reads as prose or as syntax.

The two skills are complementary, not overlapping: code-style answers "is this formatted correctly?", code-design answers "is this written well?"

Topics ​

  • Intention-Revealing Code: Names that reveal intent at the call site and contents that reveal intent at the read site — code should read as prose, not syntax. Use when naming or restructuring functions, or reviewing low-level code.

See also ​

  • Code Style: Mechanical, lint-enforced formatting rules. Sibling skill — apply both.
  • Refactoring: The verified-steps method to apply when restructuring code toward better design.
  • Writing Style: The same "reveal intent, not mechanism" principle applied to prose.