Karpathy Skills

Based on Andrej Karpathy's Claude complaints — 4 rules that force Claude to think before coding, keep it simple, make surgical changes, and define success first.

Development / Disciplinedevelopmentdiscipline

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About this skill

name: karpathy-skills description: Use when Based on Andrej Karpathy's Claude complaints — 4 rules that force Claude to think before coding, keep it simple, make surgical changes, and define success first.

Karpathy Skills

Created by Forest Chang based on a thread by Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI co-founder, Tesla AI head) about Claude's failure modes. The four rules: think before coding, keep it simple, make surgical changes only, define success before touching anything. Currently the fastest-growing single-file repo of 2026 with 160,000 GitHub stars. Slows Claude down and forces more disciplined, precise work.

What you get

Four enforced behavioral rules, pre-coding thinking requirement, simplicity enforcement, surgical-changes-only discipline, success criteria defined before any action.

Customize your output

Adjust how strictly each of the four rules is enforced. Combine with Superpowers for maximum development discipline.

Example output

Karpathy Skills intercepted Claude: success criteria defined first, simplest approach selected, only the targeted 2 files modified — no scope creep.

Best for

Developers frustrated with Claude's overconfidence and overengineering, anyone who wants more precise and disciplined AI behavior.

Source: Doobie · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GgyJfCK608 Category: Development / Discipline · Priority: Standard

SKILL.md preview

---
name: karpathy-skills
description: Use when Based on Andrej Karpathy's Claude complaints — 4 rules that force Claude to think before coding, keep it simple, make surgical changes, and define success first.
---

# Karpathy Skills

Created by Forest Chang based on a thread by Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI co-founder, Tesla AI head) about Claude's failure modes. The four rules: think before coding, keep it simple, make surgical changes only, define success before touching anything. Currently the fastest-growing single-file repo of 2026 with 160,000 GitHub stars. Slows Claude down and forces more disciplined, precise work.

## What you get

- Four enforced behavioral rules, pre-coding thinking requirement, simplicity enforcement, surgical-changes-only discipline, success crit...