Individual skill
karpathy-guardrails
Behavioral guardrails for Cavekit agents. Four principles — think before coding, simplicity first, surgical changes, goal-driven execution — that prevent over-engineering, silent assumptions, scope creep, and unfocused work. Every task-builder, reviewer, planner, and inspector must internalize these before writing a single line. Trigger phrases: "guardrails", "karpathy", "scope creep", "over-engineering", "stop adding features", "surgical fix".
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# Karpathy Guardrails
Four rules. Load them into context at the start of every task. The reviewer
enforces them as a Pass-1 filter before it looks at code quality.
## 1. Think Before Coding
Before the first edit, write down:
- **What am I actually building?** One sentence. If you cannot state it, stop.
- **What am I assuming?** List every assumption. If any is load-bearing and
unverified, flag `NEEDS_CONTEXT` and ask — do not guess.
- **What does success look like?** Map each acceptance criterion to a concrete
test, check, or observable behaviour. If a criterion is not verifiable,