An evidence-first Agent Skill for safely simplifying any codebase.
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Codebases accumulate more than dead symbols. They accumulate duplicate truths, abandoned extension points, compatibility paths with no remaining consumer, lifecycle flags that describe the same transition, and wrappers that only move complexity around.
Static analysis can produce candidates. It cannot prove that a string-dispatched route, public export, migration, persisted format, plugin entrypoint, or asynchronous cleanup path is safe to remove.
reclaim-code-entropy makes simplification evidence-driven:
| Stage | Question |
|---|---|
| Establish the contract | What is public, persisted, generated, dynamic, or compatibility-sensitive? |
| Survey entropy | Where are the extra representations, states, APIs, layers, and policies? |
| Prove the cut | Who consumes it, why was it added, and what capability would disappear? |
| Simplify one boundary | Can the obsolete contract be removed end to end without replacement glue? |
| Verify behavior | What is the smallest check that would fail if the deletion were wrong? |
The skill prefers a few proved cuts over a long speculative cleanup list. Finding nothing safe to remove is a valid result.
- unconsumed APIs, exports, config, events, and packages
- mirrored state and duplicate representations of one fact
- speculative abstractions, fixed knobs, and abandoned fallbacks
- forwarding-only wrappers and multiple routes to one behavior
- duplicated lifecycle state, readiness, cancellation, or cleanup
- defensive code on non-boundary, same-process typed handoffs
- hand-rolled infrastructure already covered by the platform
- test- or documentation-only residue from removed implementations
- code added for an idea that was later abandoned incompletely
Audit mode ranks candidates by confidence, risk, tradeoff, and estimated net reduction. It does not edit the repository.
Apply mode implements the safest proved cut, preserves observable behavior, and runs proportional verification.
Ask Codex:
Install the reclaim-code-entropy skill from https://github.com/Yevanchen/reclaim-code-entropy/tree/main/skills/reclaim-code-entropy
Start a new Codex task after installation.
git clone https://github.com/Yevanchen/reclaim-code-entropy.git
mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills
cp -R reclaim-code-entropy/skills/reclaim-code-entropy ~/.codex/skills/Audit a repository without changing it:
Use $reclaim-code-entropy to audit this repository and rank the safest simplification candidates.
Apply the strongest safe cut:
Use $reclaim-code-entropy to simplify this repository. Preserve public and persisted behavior, implement one high-confidence cut, and verify it.
Investigate a specific area:
Use $reclaim-code-entropy to check whether these lifecycle flags represent distinct states or duplicated ownership.
Deletion volume is not the goal. The goal is reducing the number of facts, contracts, states, and concepts the team must keep coherent.
A large deletion can be wrong. A small deletion can remove an entire maintenance obligation. The decisive evidence is the consumer graph, ownership model, history, compatibility surface, and verification boundary.
A useful result is reviewable, reduces concepts without hiding compatibility risk, and may still conclude that no safe cut exists.
The skill does not simplify away authorization, trust-boundary validation, accessibility basics, data-loss prevention, durable-data compatibility, or cleanup required for resource quiescence.
It is not a performance audit unless simplification is the stated goal.
The initial idea came from studying DeepSeek Harness and its emphasis on simplification during agent-driven development. This project generalizes that lesson for repositories in any language or stack. It is independent and not affiliated with DeepSeek.
MIT