good-code

Principles of good code design, and an agent skill that applies them. Built on The 5 Principles: Consistent, Simple, General, Clear, Salient.

Framed for code, but medium-agnostic: the same five principles govern good writing, documentation, and design just as well.

Install as Agent Skill

npx skills add kengz/good-code

This installs the good-code skill. It detects your stack and generates a project-specific AGENTS.md, with CLAUDE.md as exactly @AGENTS.md. It works with many agents, including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and Copilot.

Use Directly

Copy skills/good-code/CLAUDE.md into your project as AGENTS.md, adapt it to your stack, and make your CLAUDE.md the single line @AGENTS.md.

What's Included

File	Purpose
PRINCIPLES.md	The principles, the premises, and the laws that follow from them
CLAUDE.md	Template for a project's AGENTS.md
SKILL.md	Skill definition: detects your stack and generates the instructions

The 5 Principles

1. Consistent: Agree with reality and with itself. Build from established facts, handle the conditions the work will actually meet, failure included, and let evidence decide what stands. No part contradicts another.
2. Simple: Use the fewest parts that preserve what matters; complexity is a cost, not evidence of sophistication.
3. General: Prefer one principle that covers related cases over a growing set of special rules.
4. Clear: Say what it does, so its purpose is obvious from its form alone.
5. Salient: Keep what is essential, reproducible, and likely to endure.

The Method (the Algorithm, Iteration, Identity, Refinement, Communication) is in PRINCIPLES.md.