Agent skill · software engineering · nousresearch
simplify-code
Parallel 4-agent cleanup of recent code changes.
Why this skill is useful
Adds a parallel review process with specific focus areas that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
About 9k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 226,679 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Simplify Code — Parallel Review & Cleanup Review your recent code changes with four focused reviewers running in parallel, aggregate their findings, and apply the fixes worth applying. This is a cleanup pass, not a bug hunt. You are improving the quality of code that already works — removing duplication, flattening needless complexity, cutting waste, and deepening band-aid fixes. Do not go hunting for correctness bugs here; that's what requesting-code-review is for. Core principle: Four narrow reviewers beat one broad reviewer. Each one deeply searches the codebase for a single class of problem — reuse, quality, efficiency, altitude — without diluting its attention across all four. They run concurrently, so you pay the latency of one review, not four. When to Use Trigger this skill when the user says any of: "simplify" / "simplify my changes" / "simplify these changes" "review my code" / "review my recent changes" / "clean up my changes" "/simplify" (if they're carrying the Claude Code habit over) Optional modifiers the user may add — honor them: Focus: "simplify focus on efficiency" → run only the efficiency reviewer (or weight the aggregation toward it). Recognized focuses: reuse, quality (also accepts simplification), efficiency, altitude. Dry run: "simplify but don't change anything" / "just report" → run the four reviewers, present findings, apply NOTHING. Ask before applying. Scope: "simplify the last commit" / "simplify staged" / "simplify src/foo.py" → narrow the diff source accordingly (see Phase 1). Do NOT auto-run this after every edit or tack it onto the end of unrelated tasks. It costs four subagents' worth of tokens — invoke it only when the user explicitly asks. The Process Phase 1 — Identify the changes Capture the diff to review. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills nousresearch/simplify-code