Skills that keep a codebase healthy as agents work in it: repo orientation, docstring discipline, doc freshness, test coverage for new code, and pre-commit verification gates
Skills 9 in the Claude listing
Cleaning existing codebase Use when the user asks to "clean up", "apply repo-hygiene to", or "fix the hygiene of" an existing codebase — orchestrates the other hygiene skills in a phased, reviewable order rather than firing a 2 Gating commits Use when about to commit, merge, or push — runs verification (tests, typecheck, lint), confirms focus, and checks sibling hygiene (docs, tests, docstrings) BEFORE the commit lands, so "user said commi Keeping docs fresh Use when changing a public API surface — renamed export, changed signature/return type, new or removed flag/route/env var, schema migration, deprecation — before committing, so README, docs/, CHANGELO Keeping files small Use when about to add lines to an existing source file, when a single file passes ~400 lines, or when proposing where to put new code — prevents files from sprawling into multi-concern god-modules Orienting to repo Use when starting substantive work in an unfamiliar repo, before diving into task-specific grep or edits — especially when the task touches business logic, public API, build, or infra, or you don't ye Testing new code Use when adding or modifying business logic, branching code, public API, or fixing a bug in a repo using repo-hygiene — tests for the new code paths must exist before the change is committed, not "lat Using repo hygiene Use when starting any conversation in a repo — establishes the repo-hygiene skill set and the moments each sub-skill applies Writing commit messages Use when drafting any commit message — sets format (imperative subject under 72 chars, explanatory body when the why isn't obvious from the diff) and prevents the "Fix X" one-liner reflex for non-triv Writing docstrings Use when writing or modifying any function, method, class, or source file in a repo using repo-hygiene — public API, internal helpers, and new files all require docstrings; only one-line lambdas and t