karpathy-principles

Preventing scope creep during refactoring requires injecting a discipline layer before code changes to surface assumptions and enforce surgical, verifiable modifications. This approach minimizes blast radius by guiding developers through explicit thinking during planning, coding, and reviewing tasks.

Surfacing hidden assumptions before ambiguous code changes involves applying governance anchors and falsifiable triggers during planning. This process enforces explicit thinking, ensuring small changes have clear acceptance criteria and minimizing risk in tasks with large blast radius.

Engineering principles can enforce discipline during code review by integrating a governance layer that checks for simplicity and explicit acceptance criteria. This ensures reviewers verify surgical changes and confirm that scope creep and unclear goals were avoided during the coding phase.

Applying a discipline layer does not slow development but rather focuses it by minimizing scope creep and reducing blast radius. By surfacing assumptions early during planning and refactoring, it prevents costly errors and ensures small, verifiable, and safe software changes.

You need explicit governance anchors when facing M1 tasks, refactors, or planning sessions where ambiguity could lead to large blast-radius changes. These anchors enforce simplicity and guide surgical code modifications by surfacing risks early in the workflow.