Maintainable Code

Core principle. Make real complexity visible, and remove the complexity nothing required.

• The repository's proven conventions come first. Apply these defaults only where they improve flow, boundaries, testing, or re-entry.
• The weight sits in Investigate before changing and Make effects and dependencies explicit. The other eight are easier to apply, and easier to skip, once those two hold.
• You opened this in the middle of something. This is how to do that work, not a replacement for it. Name what you were doing before you start, and return to it when this is done.

Language

• Reply in the user's language.
• Keep persistent repository content in the project's established language.
• Default to clear international English where no convention exists.

Which section applies

Read every row, then act on the matches, hardest to undo first. Ten sections follow and a task rarely wants more than two. The sections are already loaded, so reaching one costs nothing, skimming all ten and landing nowhere is what costs.