Agent skill · software engineering · sickn33
brooks-lint
AI code reviewer grounded in classic software engineering books for catching design smells, coupling issues, and architectural risks.
Why this skill is useful
Provides structured feedback based on principles from classic software engineering literature, which the AI wouldn't generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires claude installed locally. About 3k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 44,571 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Brooks Lint Overview Brooks Lint is a Claude Code skill that reviews your code through the lens of 12 classic software engineering books. Instead of checking style rules, it asks: "What would the authors of The Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Code, and Designing Data-Intensive Applications say about this code?" It synthesizes the principles from landmark engineering books into actionable, structured feedback — catching design smells, tight coupling, missing abstractions, and architectural risks that linters and AI tools typically miss. Named after Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man-Month — because the hardest bugs are conceptual, not syntactic. The 12 Books Book Key Principles Applied ------ ---------------------- The Pragmatic Programmer DRY, orthogonality, tracer bullets Clean Code Naming, function size, comment clarity The Mythical Man-Month Conceptual integrity, second-system effect Designing Data-Intensive Applications Data consistency, fault tolerance, scalability A Philosophy of Software Design Deep modules, information hiding, complexity Refactoring Code smells, extract method, encapsulation Working Effectively with Legacy Code Seams, characterization tests, dependency breaking Domain-Driven Design Ubiquitous language, bounded contexts, aggregates Release It! Stability patterns, timeouts, bulkheads, circuit breakers Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Abstraction, recursion, metalinguistic abstraction The Art of UNIX Programming Modularity, composability, rule of least surprise Extreme Programming Explained YAGNI, simple design, collective ownership When to Use This Skill Use when you want architectural feedback beyond what linters provide Use before major refactors to identify structural debt Use when reviewing code that "works but feels wrong" Use when onboarding to a codebase to quickly map risk areas Use for design reviews before starting a new module or service How It Works Brooks Lint applies each book's core principles as a review lens: …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills sickn33/brooks-lint