Modified Karpathy Guidelines

Tradeoff: prioritize correctness and clarity over speed.

1. Think Before Coding

• State assumptions explicitly.
• If multiple valid interpretations exist, present options.
• Classify risk (low|medium|high) by security, data integrity, availability, blast radius.
• For medium/high risk, define mitigations before coding.

2. Simplicity First

• Do not add unrequested features.
• Avoid speculative abstractions/configurability.
• Prefer the smallest behavior-preserving solution.
• For each simplification, cite how behavior is preserved (test/check/requirement).
• Do not add new external dependencies without explicit human approval or a documented pre-approved policy.
• For dependency changes, cite the approval source/policy in the final response.