Engineering Discipline

Engineering discipline skills for AI coding agents. Works with Claude Code, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Codex, and Cursor.

How It Works

Skills chain together to handle tasks from vague request to verified implementation:

User request
    |
clarification ─── resolve ambiguity, explore codebase
    |
    |── Complexity Assessment (auto-routing)
    |       |
    |       |── Simple (score 5-8)
    |       |       |
    |       |       plan-crafting ─── create executable plan
    |       |           |
    |       |       run-plan ─── worker-validator execution loop
    |       |           |
    |       |       review-work ─── information-isolated verification
    |       |
    |       |── Complex (score 9-15)
    |               |
    |           milestone-planning ─── 5 parallel reviewers + synthesis
    |               |
    |           long-run ─── multi-day orchestrator
    |               |── M1: plan-crafting → run-plan → review-work → checkpoint
    |               |── M2: plan-crafting → run-plan → review-work → checkpoint
    |               |── ...
    |
    |── karpathy ─── implementation guardrails (before/during coding)
    |── clean-ai-slop ─── post-generation AI code cleanup
    |── simplify ─── post-implementation code quality pass
    |── systematic-debugging ─── reproduce-first bug fixing
    |── rob-pike ─── measurement-driven optimization

You don't need to memorize this. Each skill activates automatically based on trigger phrases and context.

Skills

Workflow Skills (chain together)

Clarification

Resolves vague requests into well-defined work scopes through iterative Q&A + parallel codebase exploration. Outputs a Context Brief with automatic complexity routing.

Triggers on: "I want to...", "I need...", "let's build...", or any request where scope isn't immediately clear.

Plan Crafting

Creates executable multi-step implementation plans from a clear scope. Every step contains actual code — no placeholders allowed.

Triggers on: "plan this", "create a plan", or after clarification completes with a Simple verdict.

Run Plan

Executes plans using worker-validator pairs. Workers implement, validators verify independently with zero knowledge of the worker's approach.

Triggers on: "run the plan", "execute the plan", or after plan-crafting completes.

Review Work

Information-isolated post-execution verification. Reads only the plan document and the codebase — receives no execution logs or worker output.

Triggers on: "review the work", "verify the implementation", or after run-plan completes.

Simplify

Reviews changed code through three parallel agents (reuse, quality, efficiency), then fixes any issues found.

Triggers on: "simplify", "clean up the code", "review the changes".

Long Running Execution

For complex tasks that span multiple days.

Milestone Planning (Ultraplan)

Spawns 5 independent reviewer agents in parallel — feasibility, architecture, risk, dependency, user value — then synthesizes their findings into an optimized milestone dependency DAG.

Triggers on: "plan milestones", "break this into milestones", "ultraplan", or after clarification with a Complex verdict (score 9-15).

Key features:

5 parallel reviewers with information isolation (no cross-pollination)
Synthesis agent with conflict resolution log
Independent DAG validation after synthesis
Milestone count guard (warn >7, require approval >10)

Long Run Harness

Orchestrates multi-day execution. Each milestone passes through plan-crafting, run-plan, review-work with checkpoint/recovery.

Triggers on: "long run", "start long run", "execute milestones".

Key features:

State persisted to disk after every phase transition (survives crashes)
Retry escalation: re-execute → re-plan → stop (with persistent counter)
Parallel milestones via worktree isolation
Recovery protocol for interrupted sessions
Rate limit handling aligned with Claude Code's built-in retry
Context window management for long conversations
Mid-execution correction and milestone addition procedures

Standalone Skills

Karpathy Guidelines

Preventive guardrails for code implementation — enforces surgical changes, assumption verification, and scope discipline before and during coding.

Triggers on: Before implementing features, modifying code, or when generating code without reading existing context first.

Clean AI Slop

Corrective cleanup of AI-generated code. Removes LLM-specific patterns (over-commenting, unnecessary abstractions, defensive paranoia, verbose naming, filler) while preserving behavior. Regression-tests-first, single-smell-pass discipline.

Triggers on: "clean up", "deslop", "slop", "clean AI code", or after any significant generation session.

Rob Pike's 5 Rules

A decision framework that prevents premature optimization and enforces measurement-driven development.

Triggers on: "optimize", "slow", "performance", "bottleneck", "speed up", "make faster", "too slow"

Systematic Debugging

Strict debugging workflow: reproduce-first, root-cause-first, failing-test-first.

Triggers on: Any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior.

Reference guides:

Condition-based waiting — Replace flaky timeouts with reliable condition polling
Defense-in-depth validation — Validate at every layer data passes through
Root cause tracing — Trace backward through call chains to find the original trigger
Find polluter script — Bisection script to find which test creates unwanted files/state

Quick Start

After installation, just describe what you want to do:

"I want to add authentication to the API" — triggers clarification, routes to plan-crafting or milestone-planning based on complexity
"run the plan" — executes the plan with worker-validator verification
"this test is flaky" — triggers systematic-debugging
"the API is slow" — triggers rob-pike measurement-first workflow
"clean up the AI code" — triggers clean-ai-slop corrective cleanup
"simplify" — reviews recent changes for reuse, quality, and efficiency
"long run" — starts multi-day milestone execution with checkpoints

Installation

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add tmdgusya/engineering-discipline
/plugin install engineering-discipline

Gemini CLI

gemini extensions install https://github.com/tmdgusya/engineering-discipline

Cursor

Install from the plugin marketplace, or:

/add-plugin engineering-discipline

Codex

npx skills add tmdgusya/engineering-discipline

Or install globally (available across all projects):

npx skills add tmdgusya/engineering-discipline -g

See Codex install guide for details.

OpenCode

Add to your opencode.json:

{
  "plugin": ["engineering-discipline@git+https://github.com/tmdgusya/engineering-discipline.git"]
}

See OpenCode install guide for details.

Verify Installation

Start a new session and mention a performance concern or a bug. The relevant skill should activate automatically.

Marketplace

This plugin is listed in the Claude Code plugin marketplace.

Category: engineering
Tags: optimization, debugging, engineering, discipline, rob-pike, systematic, planning, long-running

Install from marketplace

/plugin marketplace add tmdgusya/engineering-discipline
/plugin install engineering-discipline

Publish updates

Update .claude-plugin/marketplace.json with a new version and push to the repository. The marketplace entry pulls metadata from that file.

License

MIT