Run a continuous collapse-and-simplify pass that surgically removes indirection failing to earn its boundary. Use when the user says 'collapse pass', 'simplify pass', 'reduce indirection', 'shrink the surface', 'find what to delete', when asking to audit a package for dead abstractions, when reviewing a pull request, branch, or recent merged change for simplification (isolated in a worktree), or when the goal is a sequence of small refactor commits that delete more than they add.
Run a continuous collapse-and-simplify pass that surgically removes indirection failing to earn its boundary. Use when the user says 'collapse pass', 'simplify pass', 'reduce indirection', 'shrink the surface', 'find what to delete', when asking to audit a package for dead abstractions, when reviewing a pull request, branch, or recent merged change for simplification (isolated in a worktree), or when the goal is a sequence of small refactor commits that delete more than they add.
metadata
{"author":"epicenter","version":"1.0"}
Collapse Pass
A collapse pass is a session-long sequence of small commits that each delete one piece of indirection. Every commit must shrink the public surface, the file count, the call-graph depth, or the first-read effort. If a commit moves none of those needles, revert it and find a deeper smell.
Related skills: code-audit lists the codebase-specific smell categories with grep patterns. refactoring owns the per-change mechanics (caller counting, inlining, surgical commits). one-sentence-test is the cohesion gate for each candidate file. greenfield-clean-breaks covers the deeper redesigns when a collapse won't fit in one commit. first-read-review checks the diff from a stranger's perspective. post-implementation-review is the second-read protocol after each commit.
References
Load on demand:
Before any edit, read references/never-touch.md. It names the durable strings, schemas, and shapes you must not change without surfacing first, plus the pause list.
When a library refuses your model, treat the refusal as information about the model, not as friction to route around. If a "simplification" requires reimplementing a library's public surface, stop and delete the model instead.
When preserving a promise keeps a second system alive, run
asymmetric-wins. A collapse pass may sacrifice a
small amount of fidelity, compatibility, reproducibility, or rare-mode support
when the product sentence survives and the deletion removes a disproportionate
implementation family. Name the refused promise before editing.
Per-iteration ritual
For each candidate file or symbol family:
Pick one target. Count non-test callers exactly with rg. If zero, the candidate is a dead-export collapse. If one, it's an inline-the-helper collapse. If many, find a narrower target.
Mentally inline every helper, wrapper, prop, and indirection layer into its callers. Read the inlined result as a stranger would.
Run the one-sentence test on the file. Write one concrete sentence describing what it does today. If the sentence drifts or grows "or" clauses, name the ambiguity; that ambiguity is usually the smell.
Surface the finding BEFORE editing, in this exact shape:
If none is true, the change was cosmetic. Revert and find a deeper smell.
Implementation Gate
When a collapse pass follows a fresh implementation, do not limit the review to
symbols that existed before the change. New code is often the easiest place to
remove indirection. Check every new helper, component, wrapper, prop callback,
options object, and file split before declaring the implementation done.
Use this quick table before staging:
boundary callers earns itself by
WidgetHost 1 owns resource and widget lifetime
WidgetView 1 no, only passes a stable handle
One-caller boundaries can stay when they isolate a lifecycle, unsafe boundary,
public contract, or long imperative phase. They should collapse when they only
pass through stable handles, callbacks, or values that the caller already owns.
Pause and surface to the user
Stop and ask before:
Changing any string from references/never-touch.md
Deleting a public exported name with zero in-repo callers but plausible external CLI/SDK consumers
Collapsing two files where one's JSDoc documents a non-obvious invariant
Merging packages or moving exports across package boundaries
Changing a function signature that crosses a published package boundary
Stop conditions
Stop when any of the following is true:
Three consecutive files yield no findings
Remaining findings all require product input (renaming a public capability, splitting a package, adding a tenant axis)
A typecheck or test regression cannot be resolved in one follow-up commit
A configured checkpoint budget is reached (e.g. 8 checkpoints)
Stop condition: "three no-finding files" or "N checkpoints" or "queue empty"
Citation requirement: whether library refusals must be backed by a deepwiki citation against the upstream repo
Starting target: usually the narrowest surface first (e.g. packages/auth before apps/api)
Everything else (the ritual, gate, finding format, never-touch list, report shape) is in this skill.
On a PR or branch diff
When the target is a pull request, a branch, or a recent merged change rather
than a working package, the ritual above is unchanged; only the scoping differs.
Isolate the change in a worktree by default. Do not reset the user's active
checkout.
# GitHub PR number
git fetch origin pull/<number>/head:pr-<number>-collapse
git worktree add ../epicenter-pr-<number>-collapse pr-<number>-collapse
# or a named branch (slug: replace slashes with hyphens)
git fetch origin <branch>:<branch>-collapse
git worktree add ../epicenter-<branch-slug>-collapse <branch>-collapse
Compute scope with git diff --name-only <base>...HEAD. Infer the base from
PR metadata, the upstream tracking branch, or origin/main, in that order.
Read changed files first, then direct callers and tests. Run the
per-iteration ritual and anti-cosmetic gate exactly as above. List every file
read as an ASCII tree before analysis.
Do not stage, commit, push, or open a PR unless the user asks. Do not leave
the worktree dirty without reporting its path and state.
