Skill Claude

Four Principles

four-principles/

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Four always-on rules for your coding agent: think before coding, keep it simple, change only what was asked, and loop until a check passes.

Four Principles: Brain Lab skill for Claude Code

Four always-on engineering principles the agent applies to every task, not just the big ones.

Why use it

The agent guesses instead of asking, and picks one reading of an ambiguous request silently.
It ships 200 lines where 50 would do, and refactors code nobody asked it to touch.
It says "done" without ever running the check.

What it does

Think Before Coding: surface assumptions and trade-offs; ask instead of guessing.
Simplicity First: the minimum that solves the problem; nothing speculative.
Surgical Changes: every changed line traces to the request; adjacent code stays untouched.
Goal-Driven Execution: reframe vague asks into checkable ones, then loop until the check passes.

Benefits

Reviews get fast. Diffs stay small and every line traces to the ask, no archaeology.
No surprise rewrites. Your untouched code stays untouched.
"Done" actually means done. Verified, not hoped.
Drops into any task. One file, every language, zero setup.

Install

Download this skill and copy the four-principles folder to .claude/skills/four-principles/ in your project, or to ~/.claude/skills/four-principles/ to use it in every project. Claude Code finds it on its own; you can also call it with /four-principles.

Part of the Agent Engineering bundle. To get the whole set as a Claude Code plugin: /plugin marketplace add endorphin-ai/hasbrains-agent-kit, then /plugin install agent-engineering@hasbrains-agent-kit.

Source: endorphin-ai/hasbrains-agent-kit. License: MIT.

Files (5)

# four-principles

> Four always-on engineering principles the agent applies to every task — not just the big ones.

**Plugin:** `agent-engineering` — `/plugin install agent-engineering@hasbrains-agent-kit`

## Why use it

- The agent guesses instead of asking, and picks one reading of an ambiguous request silently.
- It ships 200 lines where 50 would do, and refactors code nobody asked it to touch.
- It says "done" without ever running the check.

## What it does

- **Think Before Coding** — surface assumptions and trade-offs; ask instead of guessing.
- **Simplicity First** — the minimum that solves the problem; nothing speculative.
- **Surgical Changes** — every changed line traces to the request; adjacent code stays untouched.
- **Goal-Driven Execution** — reframe vague asks into checkable ones, then loop until the check passes.

## Benefits

- **Reviews get fast.** Diffs stay small and every line traces to the ask — no archaeology.
- **No surprise rewrites.** Your untouched code stays untouched.
- **"Done" actually means done.** Verified, not hoped.
- **Drops into any task.** One file, every language, zero setup.

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Made by **HasBrains** — https://hasbrains.com/