robonix-simplify

A working change is usually larger than it needs to be. This pass makes it smaller and plainer before anyone reviews it. The rules are the maintainability page of .agents/guidelines/.

Steps

1. Measure. git diff --stat <base>...HEAD, excluding generated files. Note the size.
2. Find the fat, in this order, because the first items are the cheapest and safest:
   • comments and docstrings that restate the code, tell the history of a bug, or quote measurements (comments-explain-why, no-history-in-code);
   • code nothing calls, reads or configures (delete-dead-code) — search the whole repository, including testing/ and examples/, before deleting;
   • options, parameters and environment variables nobody sets (minimal-change);
   • the same logic in two places (dry), and new helpers that duplicate existing ones (reuse-first);
   • wrappers, layers and classes with one caller (no-single-use-abstraction);
   • long functions and deep nesting (small-functions, flat-control-flow).
3. Understand before deleting. For each candidate, find why it exists (callers, tests, git log -S). If the reason still holds, keep it.
4. Change in small steps, running the relevant tests after each. Behaviour, public names, contracts and stored formats stay the same; renames follow deprecate-dont-break.
5. Measure again and report before/after line counts with the categories removed.

Stop when the remaining code is what a careful engineer would write by hand. Fewer lines is not the goal on its own: don't merge unrelated logic or inline a helper whose name explains a step.