Refactor Research Code

Take a research repo from "works on my machine" to a clean, documented, re-runnable public release — without changing a single number the paper reports. Research code accretes dead experiment branches, hardcoded paths, magic hyperparameters, an undocumented "run this file, then that one" ritual, and identifying breadcrumbs. This skill removes that cruft and gives the repo a sensible layout, but it treats result preservation as the prime directive: it classifies every proposed change as safe (mechanical, behavior-preserving) or ask-first (could move the numbers), and it never touches an ask-first item without the author's explicit say-so.

It is not generic refactoring (no perf rewrites, no "modernize the API," no restructuring for its own sake). The only goal is release readiness with identical behavior. When a "cleanup" would change what the code computes, the right move is to flag it and ask — not to make the repo prettier at the cost of the paper's claims.

When to use