Agent skill

Radical Simplification

by pproenca in pproenca/dot-skills

Cognitive moves for collapsing complexity — reframe, clarify, reduce, decompose, invert, constrain, transfer, generalize, audit — distilled from the working method of mathematicians, physicists, and…

MITAuto-check passedAgent Workflows

Install Radical Simplification

skills CLI
$ npx skills add pproenca/dot-skills --skill radical-simplification -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install pproenca/dot-skills radical-simplification --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/pproenca/dot-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/.agents/skills/radical-simplification .claude/skills/radical-simplification && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
radical-simplification
GitHub stars
214
Token cost
~2.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
936 words
Files
25 (incl. references, assets)
Skills in repo
182
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Cognitive moves for collapsing complexity — reframe, clarify, reduce, decompose, invert, constrain, transfer, generalize, audit — distilled from the working method of mathematicians, physicists, and…

  • Works in 9 steps: Reframe the Problem → Clarify Through Interview → Reduce to the Smallest Case → …
  • Stuck on a complex problem
  • SKILL.md covers When to Apply, How to Use, Rule Categories and Quick Reference, plus 2 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Radical Simplification is an agent skill from pproenca/dot-skills. Cognitive moves for collapsing complexity — reframe, clarify, reduce, decompose, invert, constrain, transfer, generalize, audit — distilled from the working method of mathematicians, physicists, and software engineers known for turning hard problems into simple solutions (Pólya, Feynman, Hamming, Brooks, Knuth, Dijkstra, Lamport, Tao, Grothendieck, Munger, Hofstadter). Use when stuck on a complex problem, when a proposed design feels overengineered, when reviewing code that has accreted accidental complexity, or…

Its SKILL.md is about 2.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 27 other files, including reference files and assets (for example `AGENTS.md`, `assets/templates/_template.md` and `metadata.json`).

It sits in Agent Workflows, covering Requirements gathering. The repository describes itself as: A collection of AI agent skills following the Agent Skills open format. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Stuck on a complex problem
  • A proposed design feels overengineered
  • Reviewing code that has accreted accidental complexity
  • The user wants an elegant solution to a hard engineering

Example prompts

  • “this feels too complicated”
  • “we are going in circles”
  • “there must be a simpler way”
  • “/radical-simplification”

Workflow steps

9 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Reframe the Problem
  2. Clarify Through Interview
  3. Reduce to the Smallest Case
  4. Decompose Along Orthogonal Axes
  5. Invert the Search
  6. Constrain with Invariants and Symmetries
  7. Transfer From Another Domain
  8. Generalize Until the Problem Dissolves
  9. Audit Your Own Understanding

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit cf93c57. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Radical Simplification loads about 2.4k tokens when it runs, and up to ~13k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 224 tokens; SKILL.md has 936 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~224
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2.4k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~13k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from pproenca/dot-skills at commit cf93c57, republished under its MIT licence (© pproenca). 936 words, ~2,375 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/radical-simplification/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 24 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
radical-simplification
description
Cognitive moves for collapsing complexity — reframe, clarify, reduce, decompose, invert, constrain, transfer, generalize, audit — distilled from the working method of mathematicians, physicists, and software engineers known for turning hard problems into simple solutions (Pólya, Feynman, Hamming, Brooks, Knuth, Dijkstra, Lamport, Tao, Grothendieck, Munger, Hofstadter). Use when stuck on a complex problem, when a proposed design feels overengineered, when reviewing code that has accreted accidental complexity, or when the user wants an elegant solution to a hard engineering or product problem. Triggers on phrases like "this feels too complicated", "we are going in circles", "there must be a simpler way", "interview me about this plan", "find the underlying problem", and on stuck-state moments where forward search has run out and the agent needs a different angle.

Radical Simplification — Cognitive Moves for Collapsing Complex Problems

Distillation of the documented working method of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers who consistently turn complex problems into simple solutions. The skill is not a step list — it is a toolbox of cognitive moves, each correcting a specific wrong default a capable model has when faced with complexity. The moves are mostly orthogonal; pick the one that matches the symptom.

This is the thinking layer that sits above refactoring (code-simplifier), metric design (deterministic-metric-design), and reviews (design-review). Those skills apply a methodology to a known shape of artifact. This skill is the methodology itself — how to arrive at the simple shape in the first place.

When to Apply

Use this skill when:

  • The user says the problem feels too complicated, that the team is going in circles, or that there must be a simpler way
  • A proposed design has accreted parameters, dependencies, or branches and feels overengineered
  • A plan has been drafted but unresolved decisions remain, and the agent is about to commit to assumed answers
  • A bug investigation has tried several variants of the same approach without progress
  • A review surfaces complexity that may be accidental (Brooks) rather than essential
  • The agent is asked to find an elegant solution to a hard engineering or product problem
  • Forward search has exhausted and the agent needs a different angle (work backwards, invert, transfer from another domain)
  • The agent is producing fluent-sounding output but cannot back it up under expansion (Feynman test)

This skill is not for cleaning up code that already does the right thing — that is code-simplifier. Use this when the approach itself is what needs to get simpler.

How to Use

The nine categories are orthogonal cognitive moves. Match the move to the symptom:

SymptomReach forFirst rule to read
Solving feels off — maybe the wrong problemFrameframe-restate-problem
Plan drafted but unresolved decisions remainClarifyclarify-interview-one-at-a-time
Drowning in cases, parameters, branchesReducereduce-toy-case-first
Parts are tangled; changes rippleDecomposedecomp-orthogonal-axes
Forward search is exponential or stuckInvertinvert-work-backwards
Missing the structural truth of the systemConstrainconstrain-name-the-invariant
Stuck inside the current vocabularyTransfertransfer-cross-domain-analogue
The specific problem keeps resistingGeneralizegen-rising-sea
Producing fluent output you cannot back upAuditaudit-feynman-technique

For category overviews and the ordering rationale, see references/_sections.md.

Rule Categories

#CategoryPrefixMoveRules
1Reframe the ProblemframeRestate, separate essential from accidental, find the decision3
2Clarify Through InterviewclarifyOne-at-a-time questions with recommended answers; read the source before asking2
3Reduce to the Smallest CasereduceToy case, limit cases, Pareto compression3
4Decompose Along Orthogonal AxesdecompOrthogonal axes, WHAT vs HOW2
5Invert the SearchinvertWork backwards, assume failure2
6Constrain with Invariants and SymmetriesconstrainName the invariant, dimensional check2
7Transfer From Another DomaintransferCross-domain analogue, vocabulary lock-in2
8Generalize Until the Problem DissolvesgenRising sea1
9Audit Your Own UnderstandingauditFeynman, name the confusion, Fermi check3

Quick Reference

1. Reframe the Problem
Show full SKILL.md (390 more words)Show less
2. Clarify Through Interview
  • clarify-interview-one-at-a-time — Walk the design tree one branch at a time; every question paired with your recommended answer so the user reviews a position, not generates one
  • clarify-prefer-source-over-asking — If a grep, file read, or runtime check would answer it, do that — only ask what the source cannot tell you
3. Reduce to the Smallest Case
4. Decompose Along Orthogonal Axes
  • decomp-orthogonal-axes — Axes are correct when changing one does not force changing another; verbs over today's nouns
  • decomp-what-vs-how — Write the WHAT before debating the HOW; the spec is the referee
6. Constrain with Invariants and Symmetries
7. Transfer From Another Domain
8. Generalize Until the Problem Dissolves
  • gen-rising-sea — Grothendieck's rising sea; the more abstract version is sometimes the easier one — but only if it has fewer concepts, not more
9. Audit Your Own Understanding
  • code-simplifier — Refactoring patterns once the right approach is known (this skill ends, that one begins)
  • deterministic-metric-design — Applies this methodology to the specific problem of inventing metrics
  • design-review — Applies this methodology to the specific problem of reviewing UI

Authoring Note

These moves are load-bearing, not decorative. The wrong default each rule corrects is named in the rule itself — if a rule restates something a capable model already does correctly, cut it. The coverage of the skill is proven by /dev-skill:eval on real complex-problem prompts, not by hitting a rule count.

© pproenca, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 24 other files (references, assets) in .agents/skills/radical-simplification of pproenca/dot-skills.

  • SKILL.md
  • AGENTS.md
  • assets/templates/_template.md
  • metadata.json
  • references/_sections.md
  • references/audit-fermi-sanity-check.md
  • references/audit-feynman-technique.md
  • references/audit-name-the-confusion.md
  • references/clarify-interview-one-at-a-time.md
  • references/clarify-prefer-source-over-asking.md
  • references/constrain-dimensional-check.md
  • references/constrain-name-the-invariant.md
  • references/decomp-orthogonal-axes.md
  • references/decomp-what-vs-how.md
  • references/frame-essential-vs-accidental.md
  • references/frame-find-decision-point.md
  • references/frame-restate-problem.md
  • references/gen-rising-sea.md
  • … and 7 more

Open the folder on GitHubat commit cf93c57

Compare with similar skills

Radical Simplification next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Radical Simplification compared with similar skills
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Interview Meaddyosmani/agent-skills102k6 repos~3.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Grillingbestofjs/bestofjs3.1k30 repos~464Automated safety check: PassMIT
Agentic Workflow Designerdotnet/Open-XML-SDK4.6k2 repos~3.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Ask User QuestionMemTensor/MemOS12k—~1kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0

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Categories

Questions about Radical Simplification

What does Radical Simplification do?

Cognitive moves for collapsing complexity — reframe, clarify, reduce, decompose, invert, constrain, transfer, generalize, audit — distilled from the working method of mathematicians, physicists, and…. Radical Simplification is an agent skill from pproenca/dot-skills. Cognitive moves for collapsing complexity — reframe, clarify, reduce, decompose, invert, constrain, transfer, generalize, audit — distilled from the working method of mathematicians, physicists, and software engineers known for turning hard problems into simple solutions (Pólya, Feynman, Hamming, Brooks, Knuth, Dijkstra, Lamport, Tao, Grothendieck, Munger, Hofstadter).

When should I use Radical Simplification?

Radical Simplification fits situations like: stuck on a complex problem; A proposed design feels overengineered; reviewing code that has accreted accidental complexity; the user wants an elegant solution to a hard engineering.

How do I install Radical Simplification in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add pproenca/dot-skills --skill radical-simplification -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (.agents/skills/radical-simplification in pproenca/dot-skills) into .claude/skills/radical-simplification in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Radical Simplification in Codex?

Run `npx skills add pproenca/dot-skills --skill radical-simplification -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (.agents/skills/radical-simplification in pproenca/dot-skills) into .agents/skills/radical-simplification in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Radical Simplification in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add pproenca/dot-skills --skill radical-simplification -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/radical-simplification, .gemini/skills/radical-simplification, .github/skills/radical-simplification and .opencode/skills/radical-simplification in your project.

What does Radical Simplification need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Radical Simplification is instructions for the agent only.

Does Radical Simplification access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Radical Simplification safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Radical Simplification use?

Radical Simplification is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Radical Simplification use?

About 2.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 9.5k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 11k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Radical Simplification?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Radical Simplification: Using Superpowers (farm-fe/farm, 5.6k stars), Interview Me (addyosmani/agent-skills, 102k stars), Grilling (bestofjs/bestofjs, 3.1k stars) and Agentic Workflow Designer (dotnet/Open-XML-SDK, 4.6k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Radical Simplification?

pproenca (a GitHub user) maintains it in pproenca/dot-skills, which has 214 GitHub stars. The repository holds 182 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on August 15, 2026.

Source: pproenca/dot-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.