principle-laziness-protocol

Apply a laziness protocol that biases toward deletion and the smallest diff that solves the problem. It instructs the agent to look for removals before additions and to question any new abstraction or layer before writing code.

Reduce diff size by making the smallest change that solves the problem and preferring deletions over additions. Fewer lines beat elegant boilerplate, and tiny pass-throughs or duplicated choices should be removed before they spread.

Flatten the hierarchy when answering a question about the code requires tracing through more than 3 files or layers. A rich interface hiding substantial work is acceptable, but deep chains of thin pass-through calls are not.

A minimal-diff approach can defer necessary structural redesign when the existing architecture is fundamentally wrong. It optimizes for maintainability of the current change, not for long-term architectural correctness.

Stop and look for a more direct path whenever a task asks you to pass a new signal through types, schemas, pipelines, or similar layers. Often the decision can be consolidated behind one source of truth and passed as a simple flag.