karpathy-guidelines

To reduce common LLM coding mistakes, apply behavioral guidelines that enforce explicit assumptions, surface tradeoffs, and define verifiable success criteria before writing code. This keeps changes surgical and well-scoped.

The best guidelines for surgical code changes emphasize a simplicity-first rule to avoid unnecessary abstractions, require stating assumptions explicitly, and mandate modifying only what is necessary without touching unrelated code.

To enforce verifiable success criteria when refactoring, apply think-before-code discipline to surface uncertainties and tradeoffs upfront, ensuring all modifications remain minimal and functionally verifiable.

Yes, this approach to code review works for general software projects by applying behavioral guidelines during writing, reviewing, and refactoring to limit features and avoid overcomplication across any codebase.

You should surface tradeoffs and assumptions before writing new code to establish think-before-code discipline, which prevents overcomplication and ensures that all subsequent changes remain well-scoped and verifiable.