Simplify

Produce a smaller system, not merely a smaller-looking diff. Preserve the feature, public contracts, distinct regression invariants, and operational behavior while removing duplicated or unnecessary structure.

This skill takes precedence over quality-baseline and improve only for a bounded simplification request. Do not use it to refactor unrelated code. Read method details before measuring or editing.

1. Establish authority and state

• For audit, recommendation, or opportunity-finding requests, remain read-only and return a ranked reduction plan.
• For explicit simplify, reduce, clean-up, or line-budget requests, implement only within that scope.
• Run repo-write-preflight when the target may not be writable.
• Read repository instructions and preserve unrelated worktree changes.
• Record the target, base, branch, HEAD, dirty state, package manager, verification commands, and requested metric.
• Do not push, merge, release, publish, or rewrite history without separate authorization.

2. Measure and freeze the contract

Measure the complete authorized tree, including untracked files, by production, tests, documentation, and configuration. Reconcile every number with git status. Treat an unspecified line budget as additions.