keysforthewin skills

A Claude Code plugin marketplace with two skills. They are unrelated — install either or both.

Skill	What it does
cleancode	Naming-first refactoring. Restructures code so it can be read from names alone, then verifies behaviour was preserved.
discernment	Situational judgment before answering. Not code-specific — it applies to any request.

The repository is still named cleancode for historical reasons; the marketplace it serves is keysforthewin.

cleancode

Point it at a block of code and it restructures it so a reader who does not know the algorithm can understand it from names alone — then verifies behaviour was preserved by running the result against the original or an independent reference implementation.

It enforces sixteen rules, including:

• Name the class after what it produces and how (PrimeGeneratorWithSieveOfEratosthenes, not PrimeGenerator).
• Name helpers by purpose, not mechanism (stopWatchingMultiplesBelow, not advanceMultiplesToReachAtLeast).
• Predicates never change state — is…/has… must be safe to call twice.
• Booleans that only carry control flow become a predicate's return value.
• Every abbreviation and single letter gets expanded.
• Comments carry only what names cannot: an invariant, a proof, a rejected alternative, a domain fact.
• Verify, don't assume — state how behaviour was checked and report the result.

See plugins/cleancode/SKILL.md for all sixteen and plugins/cleancode/reference/worked-example.md for a full before/after.

Where the rules come from

They were derived from the published debate between Robert C. Martin (author of Clean Code) and John Ousterhout (author of A Philosophy of Software Design), conducted September 2024 – February 2025:

A Philosophy of Software Design vs Clean Code

They disagree about method length, comments, and TDD, and work through a PrimeGenerator example — the same code used as the worked example here — to ground the argument. This skill is one reading of that exchange, not a statement of either author's position: neither Martin nor Ousterhout endorsed or reviewed it, and both would likely take issue with parts of it.

discernment

Written by Christian Boneta (@Tuna119), and redistributed here unmodified apart from packaging. All credit for it belongs to them.

It runs a short pass before answering — over the request, your own knowledge, the sources, and the draft — to catch the cases where the obvious read is the wrong one. It is not a code skill; it applies to factual questions, advice, pasted content, emotionally loaded messages, and irreversible actions.

See plugins/discernment/SKILL.md.

Install

Two options per skill. The plugin gets updates handled for you; the clone gets you the shorter command name. Pick one — installing both leaves two copies in the skill list.

	Plugin	Clone
Command	/cleancode:cleancode	/cleancode
Updates	/plugin marketplace update, or automatic	git pull by hand
Requires	Claude Code with /plugin	git only

Option 1: as plugins (recommended)

This repo is its own marketplace. Inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add keysforthewin/cleancode
/plugin install cleancode@keysforthewin
/plugin install discernment@keysforthewin
/reload-plugins

Install only the ones you want; they are separate plugins. Each install asks for a scope — user for every project, project to commit it for collaborators, local for just you in this repo.

To get updates automatically, run /plugin, open the Marketplaces tab, select keysforthewin, and choose Enable auto-update. Claude Code then refreshes it in the background shortly after startup. (Third-party marketplaces have auto-update off by default.)

Option 2: as plain skills

A skill directory is ~/.claude/skills/<name>/ for every project, or .claude/skills/<name>/ for one project only. Copy whichever you want out of this repo:

git clone https://github.com/keysforthewin/cleancode.git /tmp/kftw-skills
cp -r /tmp/kftw-skills/plugins/cleancode   ~/.claude/skills/cleancode
cp -r /tmp/kftw-skills/plugins/discernment ~/.claude/skills/discernment

The directory name is what makes the command — ~/.claude/skills/cleancode/ gives you /cleancode — and SKILL.md has to sit at its top level. The copied .claude-plugin/ directory inside is harmless; delete it if you like.

Then start a new session, or run /reload-plugins in the current one.

Verify it installed

Type / in Claude Code and look for the skill in the list. For plugins, /plugin list shows them too, and the Errors tab in /plugin reports anything that failed to load.

Use

cleancode takes a target (/cleancode:cleancode if you installed the plugin):

/cleancode src/parser/tokenizer.js

/cleancode the PrimeGenerator class

discernment is meant to fire on its own rather than be invoked, but you can call it directly the same way. Claude will also reach for either on its own when the situation matches its description.

Update

Plugins:

/plugin marketplace update keysforthewin
/reload-plugins

Clones — re-run the cp commands from a fresh clone.

Uninstall

Plugins:

/plugin uninstall cleancode@keysforthewin
/plugin uninstall discernment@keysforthewin
/plugin marketplace remove keysforthewin

Clones:

rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/cleancode ~/.claude/skills/discernment