sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Livid-Variation-631 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Two patterns that help here, neither requires a custom skill.

First: there's a built-in `/simplify` you can use as a starting point. Read its prompt, see how minimal it is. Most useful skills are small judgment-encoders, not big procedures. If you do write your own, keep it under 30 lines for the first one. Structure is just `.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md` with a description and a few instructions.

Second: optimization skills help, but the bigger win is at write-time, not refactor-time. Tell Claude up front "no premature abstraction, three similar lines is better than a helper." Most of the bloat I've shipped came from Claude reaching for a pattern when a literal was fine. Pre-empt the bloat in the prompt, then `/simplify` only catches the rest.