// Behavioral guidelines to reduce common LLM coding mistakes. Use when writing, reviewing, or refactoring code to avoid overcomplication, make surgical changes, surface assumptions, and define verifiable success criteria.
| name | karpathy-guidelines |
| description | Behavioral guidelines to reduce common LLM coding mistakes. Use when writing, reviewing, or refactoring code to avoid overcomplication, make surgical changes, surface assumptions, and define verifiable success criteria. |
Behavioral guidelines to reduce common LLM coding mistakes, derived from Andrej Karpathy's observations on LLM coding pitfalls.
Tradeoff: These guidelines bias toward caution over speed. For trivial tasks, use judgment.
Don't assume. Don't hide confusion. Surface tradeoffs.
Before implementing:
Minimum code that solves the problem. Nothing speculative.
Ask yourself: "Would a senior engineer say this is overcomplicated?" If yes, simplify.
Touch only what you must. Clean up only your own mess.
When editing existing code:
When your changes create orphans:
The test: Every changed line should trace directly to the user's request.
Define success criteria. Loop until verified.
Transform tasks into verifiable goals:
For multi-step tasks, state a brief plan:
1. [Step] → verify: [check]
2. [Step] → verify: [check]
3. [Step] → verify: [check]
Strong success criteria let you loop independently. Weak criteria ("make it work") require constant clarification.