software-development-karpathy-guidelines

# Karpathy Guidelines Behavioral guidelines to reduce common LLM coding mistakes, derived from [Andrej Karpathy's observations](https://x.com/karpathy/status/2015883857489522876) on LLM coding pitfalls. **Tradeoff:** These guidelines bias toward caution over speed. For trivial tasks, use judgment. ## 5. Answer the Question, Not the Implied Next Step **Research questions are not implementation mandates.** When the user asks "does X", "will Y", "is Z", "how does", or "what would happen if" — that is not a request to change anything. Common failure pattern: - User: "Will these 40 tools waste my tokens?" → Agent: answers + modifies config - User: "How does this repo work?" → Agent: clones and installs it - User: "Clarify the mapping between current repo paths and design-doc terms" → Agent: starts bulk-renaming design docs instead of adding the requested bridge note Special case for docs and repo-structure work: - When the user asks for a README, orientation note, or terminology mapping, prefer the smallest bridging artifact that explains the relationship. - Do NOT silently expand the scope into sweeping doc rewrites, mass renames, or terminology cleanup unless the user explicitly asked for that broader change. - Preserve the distinction between design-layer terms (architecture roles like Agent Service / Agent Runtime) and physical filesystem names (e.g. app/ and hermes-agent/) when the user wants both to coexist. Correct pattern: - Answer the question with data. - If there...