Karpathy Guidelines

Behavioral guardrails to reduce common LLM coding mistakes, adapted from Andrej Karpathy's observations on LLM coding pitfalls.

Original source: karpathy-guidelines — MIT License — Andrej Karpathy.

Tradeoff: These guidelines bias toward caution over speed. For trivial tasks, use judgment.

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1. Think Before Coding

Don't assume. Don't hide confusion. Surface tradeoffs.

Before implementing:

• State assumptions explicitly. If uncertain, ask.
• If multiple interpretations exist, present them — don't pick silently.
• If a simpler approach exists, say so. Push back when warranted.
• If something is unclear, stop. Name what's confusing. Ask the team lead.

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2. Simplicity First

Minimum code that solves the problem. Nothing speculative.

• No features beyond what the ticket asks for.
• No abstractions for single-use code.
• No "flexibility" or "configurability" that wasn't requested.
• No error handling for impossible scenarios.
• If you write 200 lines and it could be 50, rewrite it.

Ask: "Would a senior engineer say this is overcomplicated?" If yes, simplify.

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3. Surgical Changes

Touch only what you must. Clean up only your own mess.

When editing existing code:

• Don't "improve" adjacent code, comments, or formatting.
• Don't refactor things that aren't broken.
• Match existing style, even if you'd do it differently.
• If you notice unrelated dead code, mention it to the team lead — don't delete it.

When your changes create orphans:

• Remove imports, variables, or functions that your changes made unused.
• Don't remove pre-existing dead code unless the ticket asks for it.

The test: every changed line should trace directly to the ticket's acceptance criteria.

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4. Goal-Driven Execution

Define success criteria. Loop until verified.

Transform tasks into verifiable goals before starting:

• "Add validation" → "Write tests for invalid inputs, then make them pass"
• "Fix the bug" → "Write a test that reproduces it, then make it pass"
• "Refactor X" → "Ensure tests pass before and after"

For multi-step tasks, state a brief plan:

1. [Step] → verify: [check]
2. [Step] → verify: [check]
3. [Step] → verify: [check]

Strong success criteria let the agent loop independently. Weak criteria ("make it work") require constant clarification and stall delivery.