All Skills
Software design skills for AI coding agents, organized by pillar.
Structure
Deep Modules
Measures module depth: whether the interface is simple relative to the implementation behind it.
Read →Module Boundaries
Evaluates where module boundaries are drawn and whether modules should be merged or split.
Read →Information Hiding
Checks for information leakage across module boundaries, including temporal decomposition and false encapsulation.
Read →Pull Complexity Downwards
Checks whether complexity is pushed to callers or absorbed by implementations — the direction complexity flows.
Read →Abstraction
General vs. Special-Purpose
Evaluates whether interfaces are appropriately general-purpose.
Read →Error Design
Reviews error handling and exception design, applying the "define errors out of existence" principle.
Read →Abstraction Quality
Evaluates whether abstractions provide a genuinely different way of thinking or are structurally shallow.
Read →Clarity
Naming & Obviousness
Reviews naming quality and code obviousness via the isolation test, scope-length principle, and consistency audit.
Read →Comments & Documentation
Reviews comment quality and documentation practices: the four comment types, comments-first workflow, and comment rot.
Read →Process
Strategic Mindset
Assesses whether code reflects strategic or tactical thinking, including the 10-20% investment rule and tactical-tornado patterns.
Read →Design It Twice
Generates and compares at least two fundamentally different design alternatives on concrete criteria before committing.
Read →Code Evolution
Evaluates whether changes to existing code maintain or degrade design quality.
Read →Complexity Recognition
Diagnoses whether complexity exists and where it comes from, using the three-symptom, two-root-cause framework.
Read →Diagnostic
Red Flags Diagnostic
Scans code against 17 design smells (the book's 14 named Red Flags plus 3 process-stage signals) and produces a structured diagnostic report.
Read →Design Review Orchestrator
Orchestrates a structured design review, running the other skills as a diagnostic funnel from complexity triage to a full red-flags sweep.
Read →Diagnose
Routes a vague symptom or complaint to the most relevant Clairvoyance skill via a decision tree.
Read →