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This skill distills John Ousterhout's "A Philosophy of Software Design" into a practical reference for code reviews and architecture discussions. It helps software architects, senior engineers, and tech leads identify shallow modules, information leakage, pass-through methods, and other complexity signals before they compound. The red flags quick reference gives teams a shared vocabulary for talking about design quality during reviews, API design, module decomposition, and refactoring decisions.
WHO IT'S FOR
Software architects and technical leads
evaluating module decomposition and interface depth
Code reviewers
identifying design red flags during code review
API and interface designers
designing deep modules with simple interfaces
Software developers refactoring legacy code
applying complexity reduction techniques and strategic improvements
Compatible AgentsThe repository documents support for these agents. The skills may also work with other agents that can load SKILL.md files, but they may need some setup or small changes.
Use the software-design-philosophy skill to review [path to a small module or code file]. Identify up to three concrete design problems involving change amplification, cognitive load, unknown unknowns, dependencies, obscurity, or information leakage. For each problem, cite the relevant code and suggest one focused improvement. Do not modify the code.
Claude
Codex