programming-practices-corelisted

# Skill: programming-practices-core ## Activation Contract Use this skill when asked to review, explain, or improve general programming practices across languages: readability, maintainability, duplication, cohesion, coupling, naming, simplicity, and safe evolution. Do **not** use this skill when the request is only formatting, framework setup, performance tuning, security auditing, testing, or language-specific API usage with no broader design-quality question. ## Responsibility This skill teaches a bounded code-quality review workflow. It does not choose tools, call other skills, rewrite whole systems, or replace domain requirements supplied by the user. ## Required Context - Target language and code snippet/files, if available. - Intended behavior and current pain point. - Constraints: legacy safety, public API compatibility, deadline, or team conventions. - Whether the user wants diagnosis only or an improvement plan. ## Context Budget - Keep this `SKILL.md` focused on the executable contract. - Use `references/principles.md` only when the request needs deeper tradeoff language. ## Hard Rules - Prefer clarity over cleverness. - Treat DRY as “avoid duplicating knowledge,” not “remove every repeated line.” - Do not recommend abstractions before identifying a stable concept or repeated reason to change. - Preserve observable behavior unless the user explicitly asks for behavior change. - Name tradeoffs: simplicity, coupling, cohesion, testability, discoverability,