Apply when reviewing or shaping code that's hard to trace. Count layers between question and answer, and hidden state in the reader's head; collapse one-caller wrappers and shrink mutable scope.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Minimize Reader Load
Maintainability is the work a reader must do to understand code. Track two axes:
1. **Layers to trace.** How many indirections sit between the question and the answer.
2. **State to hold.** How much hidden or mutable context the reader must keep in their head.
**Why:** Code is read far more than it is written. LOC, cyclomatic complexity, and "clean architecture" are proxies. Reader load is the thing that matters. The two axes are independent. A flat file with 50 globals can be as hard to reason about as a 6-layer adapter stack. Guard both. This is the human analog of [Guard the Context Window](../principle-guard-the-context-window/SKILL.md). Working memory is finite for readers too.
**The pattern:**
- **Collapse layers** that cost more than they save: wrappers with one caller, adapters with no second implementation, speculative indirection that was never needed. Inline them.
- **Make adjacent layers change the abstraction.** A layer that repeats the same methods and arguments adds reader load without compression. Collapse pass-through layers.
…
The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20261005.32edae5, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_iwnfcccvnprphvnm
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=barbieri/local-openfinance/principle-minimize-reader-load
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/42551c5dc74cd578163c148da552db3ff67d29b78600ef216bfd311fb828fe69
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
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