artful-simplicity git:20260827.310e8c5A

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---
name: artful-simplicity
description: Audit code, tests, and prose for artful simplicity; use for readability, design, refactoring, over-engineering, and redundancy reviews.
---

# Artful simplicity

A unit is simple when a cold reader can name its one idea, predict its contents from its name, and keep nothing unrelated in mind. Tests state observable behavior and invariants; prose spends exactly the words it needs.

Local reading judges clarity, not necessity. Rewrite may follow from sight only if no observer sees behavior change; delete, fold, and move require, respectively, proof of reachability and consequence, equivalence across observable states and transitions, and independent agreement on the boundary. Seek contradictions, not volume.

Before changing behavior, name the change, the observer, the safety direction, and the broken alternative. Direction decides, not size.