Claude-skills karpathy-check

Run Karpathy's 4-principle review on staged changes or the last commit. Checks complexity, diff noise, hidden assumptions, and goal verification. Usage /karpathy-check [--last-commit]

install

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/alirezarezvani/claude-skills

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/alirezarezvani/claude-skills "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/.gemini/skills/karpathy-check" ~/.claude/skills/alirezarezvani-claude-skills-karpathy-check && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: .gemini/skills/karpathy-check/SKILL.md

/karpathy-check

Review your staged changes (or last commit) against Karpathy's 4 coding principles.

Usage

/karpathy-check                 # review staged changes
/karpathy-check --last-commit   # review the most recent commit

What it runs

Principle #2 (Simplicity):
```
scripts/complexity_checker.py
```
on all changed files — detects over-engineering, premature abstractions, deep nesting, long functions
Principle #3 (Surgical):
```
scripts/diff_surgeon.py
```
on the diff — detects comment-only changes, whitespace noise, style drift, drive-by refactors
Principles #1 + #4 (Think + Goals): The
```
karpathy-reviewer
```
agent reads the diff and applies human-judgment checks — hidden assumptions, missing verification

Output

A structured report with per-principle verdicts and specific line-level fix recommendations.

When to run

Before committing (catches noise and overcomplication early)
After completing a feature (sanity check before PR)
When you suspect the LLM overcoded something

Sub-agent

Dispatches the

karpathy-reviewer

agent. See

agents/karpathy-reviewer.md

Scripts

engineering/karpathy-coder/scripts/complexity_checker.py

engineering/karpathy-coder/scripts/diff_surgeon.py

engineering/karpathy-coder/scripts/assumption_linter.py

engineering/karpathy-coder/scripts/goal_verifier.py

Skill Reference

→

engineering/karpathy-coder/SKILL.md