AugmentClaude
MITEngineering

No Gold-Plating

By kpab· kpab/claude-fable-5-skills· 0

Diffs map one-to-one to the ask — no speculative abstractions or 'while I was here' cleanup.

Installation

  1. Make sure Claude is on your device and in your terminal.

    Skills load from ~/.claude/skills/ when Claude Code starts up — so you need it on your machine first. If you don't have it yet, install it once with the command below, then run claude in any terminal to verify.

    One-time setup
    npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

    Already have it? Skip ahead.

  2. Paste into Claude Code or into your terminal.
    Install
    Sign up to copy
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    This copies the whole skill folder into ~/.claude/skills/no-gold-plating-kpab/ — the SKILL.md plus any scripts, reference docs, or templates the skill ships with. Safe default: works for every skill.

    Faster alternative (instruction-only skills)

    Skips the clone and grabs only the SKILL.md file. Don't use this if the skill ships Python scripts, reference markdowns, or asset templates — they won't be downloaded and the skill will fail when it tries to load them.

    Quick install (SKILL.md only)
    Sign up to copy
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  3. Restart Claude Code.

    Quit and reopen Claude Code (or any other agent that loads from ~/.claude/skills/). New skills are picked up on startup.

  4. Just ask Claude.

    Skills auto-activate when your request matches the skill's description — no slash command needed. Trigger phrases live in the skill's own frontmatter; you can read them in the “What this skill does” section above.

Prefer to read the source first? Open on GitHub.

When Claude uses it

Keep Claude Fable 5 changes minimal — no unrequested refactors, abstractions, defensive code, or feature creep. Use in code review, bug fixes, and any coding session where diffs come back bigger than the ask, with extra helpers, error handling, or "while I was here" cleanup. Particularly important at high and xhigh effort.

What this skill does

No Gold-Plating

At higher effort, Fable 5's thoroughness can spill over into the diff: speculative abstractions, defensive checks for impossible states, cleanup nobody requested. Each of these enlarges review surface and risk. The discipline:

Rules

  • The diff should map one-to-one to the request. A bug fix touches the bug; it does not reorganize the neighborhood.
  • No helpers, layers, or abstractions for a single call site. Inline it.
  • Do not design for requirements that don't exist yet. The simplest correct implementation wins; generality is a cost paid today for a benefit that may never arrive.
  • Validate only at system boundaries — user input, external APIs, file contents. Inside the system, trust the framework and your own invariants; do not add error handling for states that cannot occur.
  • Prefer changing code over compatibility shims, flags, or deprecation layers, unless the code is a published interface someone else depends on.
  • If you notice genuinely valuable adjacent work, note it in one sentence at the end. Do not do it.

Self-check before finalizing a diff

  1. Could a reviewer trace every hunk back to the user's request in one step?
  2. Did I add any function, parameter, or branch "just in case"?
  3. Is any new error-handling path actually reachable?

If any answer is wrong, cut it.

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