good-code

Agent instructions and coding standards built on The 5 Principles: Correct, Simple, General, Clear, Salient.

Framed for code — this repo is good-code — but medium-agnostic: the same five principles govern good writing, documentation, and design just as well.

Install as Agent Skill

npx skills add kengz/good-code

This installs the good-code skill, which generates a project-specific CLAUDE.md (or AGENTS.md) tailored to your stack. Works with 37+ agents — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, and more.

Use Directly

Copy skills/good-code/CLAUDE.md into your project root and adapt the comment blocks to your stack.

What's Included

File	Purpose
PRINCIPLES.md	The 5 Principles — full explanations
CLAUDE.md	Agent instructions template
SKILL.md	Skill definition — auto-detects your stack and generates a tailored instructions file

The 5 Principles

1. Correct — Right in every condition it will meet, failure included — constructed from known truths, not debugged into shape.
2. Simple — The fewest parts that lose nothing essential — complexity is not sophistication.
3. General — One principle that unifies many cases, in place of many ad hoc rules.
4. Clear — Says what it does — its purpose is obvious from its form alone.
5. Salient — Reproducible, essential and lasting — independent attempts converge on it.

Read the full writeup in PRINCIPLES.md.