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Elegant Code · athola | DecimalAI

codingby athola

Elegant Code

athola/elegant-code

Source athola/claude-night-market ↗License MIT

Guide minimal code via a decision ladder with full safety, edge, and negative-case coverage.

SkillScore86Maintained

Automatic

Coding pack

Last verified 8/20/2026

What it changes

Passed 19 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 14 of 22 without it.

Without skill64%

With skill86%

Checks it passed that the model alone missed

The response identifies Rung 5 or a few lines of explicit code.
The response explicitly ranks adding a new dependency below Rung 5.
The response explicitly states Rung 2 or built-in standard library usage.

and 4 more in the full report

5 fixed14 passed either way3 still failing0 broke

Pass-rate lift: +23 pp
Tokens: +60%
Agent turns: 0%
Response time: -32%

Model gemini-3.6-flashMeasured 8/20/2026v119 of 22 cases passed with skill

Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.

Use this skill

Save it into your project's skills folder. Claude Code picks it up in its next session.

curl -fsSL --create-dirs -o .claude/skills/athola-elegant-code/SKILL.md https://app.decimal.ai/s/athola-elegant-code/SKILL.md

Want it pinned and updatable? pip install "decimalai>=0.15", then decimalai skills add athola-elegant-code, and start Claude Code with claude --plugin-dir "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.agents"

1 · One-time — install the CLI (docs ↗)

pip install "decimalai>=0.15"

2 · Get the skill — writes .agents/skills/athola-elegant-code/ and pins it in .decimal/skills.lock

decimalai skills add athola-elegant-code

No CLI? Get the same file — curl · raw file

curl -fsSL --create-dirs -o .claude/skills/athola-elegant-code/SKILL.md https://app.decimal.ai/s/athola-elegant-code/SKILL.md

Raw file: /s/athola-elegant-code/SKILL.md ↗ · machine-readable summary at /s/athola-elegant-code.json ↗

Safety checks: 3 of 3 passed

Code scan CleanIntent PassedContent Clean

See it in action

One of 5 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.

1 of 5

Prompt

A developer wants to write a generic YAML configuration file parser class with inheritance and hot-reloading capability for a single string configuration value that is read once at startup. Provide the refactored Python code and state how this design decision was evaluated.

What was checked, without and with the skill
Checked	Without skill	With skill
The response rejects the speculative parser class in favor of directly reading or inlining the configuration value.	Missed	Passed
The response cites Rung 1 or the need-to-exist check to eliminate the unneeded abstraction.	Missed	Passed

case-04 · gemini-3.6-flash · 8/20/2026 · answers are capped and redacted

What's inside

The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.

SKILL.md184 lines2 files

Elegant Code

Write the minimal, elegant code that fully solves the problem: its performance, its edge cases, and its failure cases. Minimal is not fewest lines. It is no incidental complexity, with nothing essential omitted.

What this skill is (and is not)

This skill codifies a discipline that strong models already exhibit some of the time. Its value is not teaching a missing capability. Its value is three things:

A shared vocabulary (the rungs, the floor) that review skills can point at, so "you skipped rung 2" is a concrete, auditable note.
Consistency: the ladder is applied every time, not just when the model happens to think of it.
A guard: the negligence floor below is never traded away for brevity.

It is the generative counterpart to the review-side contract in leyline:additive-bias-defense.

When To Use

Before adding a function, file, class, abstraction, or dependency.
When choosing between reuse and writing new code.
When auditing a diff for lines that can be deleted.

When NOT To Use

Throwaway scripts or one-time migrations where review cost is near zero.
Cases where the negligence floor (below) is in play: there, add the guard first and optimize length second.

The Decision Ladder

Track record

Benchmark

19 / 22

test cases passed, vs 14 / 22 without

Adoption

Users: 0
Times used: 0

Safety and source details

SkillSafety

✓ 3 of 3 passed

Code scan15 of 15 checks clean

0 critical · 0 warning · 0 info — scanner v4 — 8/3/2026

View 15 scanner checks

live_secretremote_code_executionreverse_shelldata_exfiltrationssrf_metadataagent_snoopinganti_refusaldestructive_commandsobfuscated_unicodeunicode_homoglyphopaque_blobsuspicious_urltool_overreachtrigger_abuseprompt_injection_phrasing

IntentSafe

LLM judge · does the skill do what it claims

ContentClean

LLM judge · policy & harmful-content review

Source

Imported

athola / claude-night-market

plugins/conserve/skills/elegant-code/SKILL.md

View on GitHub ↗

License MITImported 8/3/2026Version v1Bundled 1 file

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Ready to supercharge your AI agents?

See it in action

What's inside

Elegant Code

What this skill is (and is not)

When To Use

When NOT To Use

The Decision Ladder

Track record

Benchmark

Adoption

SkillSafety

Source

Other skills for the same job

Related skills