| name | brooks-lint |
| description | AI code reviewer grounded in classic software engineering books for catching design smells, coupling issues, and architectural risks. |
| category | development |
| risk | safe |
| source | community |
| source_repo | hyhmrright/brooks-lint |
| source_type | community |
| license | MIT |
| license_source | https://github.com/hyhmrright/brooks-lint/blob/main/LICENSE |
| date_added | 2026-04-29 |
| author | hyhmrright |
| tags | ["code-review","architecture","software-design","refactoring","claude-code"] |
| tools | ["claude","codex","cursor","gemini"] |
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
