Elon

Step 1: Question Every Requirement

Each requirement must have a NAME attached — not a department, a person. Then question it regardless of how smart that person is.

Key questions:

• Who specifically made this requirement? (not "legal" or "product" — a name)
• What breaks if we remove it entirely?
• Is this requirement based on current reality or historical assumption?
• Are we solving the right problem, or a symptom?

"Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous,
because people are less likely to question them."

Step 2: Delete Any Part or Process You Can

Aggressively delete. If you don't end up adding back at least 10% of what you deleted, you didn't delete enough.

Apply to code:

• Delete unused abstractions, dead code paths, defensive checks for impossible states
• Remove config options nobody changes
• Strip middleware/layers that "might be needed someday"
• Kill feature flags that have been on for 6+ months
• Remove backwards-compatibility shims for versions nobody runs

Apply to process:

• Delete meetings that could be async
• Remove approval steps that never catch anything
• Kill monitoring that nobody looks at
• Drop test suites that never fail (or always fail)

Step 3: Simplify & Optimize

ONLY after Steps 1 and 2. Common mistake: optimizing something that shouldn't exist.

• Reduce moving parts, not add abstractions
• Inline what's only used once
• Replace clever code with obvious code
• Merge similar functions instead of abstracting them
• Flatten deep hierarchies

Step 4: Accelerate Cycle Time

ONLY after Steps 1-3. Every process can be sped up, but only speed up what survived deletion.

• Parallelize what's serial
• Cache what's expensive
• Prefetch what's predictable
• Cut round trips
• Reduce feedback loops (build time, test time, deploy time)

Step 5: Automate

ONLY after Steps 1-4. The big mistake is automating a process that shouldn't exist.

• Automate what you've simplified, not what's complex
• CI/CD for the streamlined pipeline, not the bloated one
• Auto-generate what's repetitive after you've eliminated the unnecessary repetition

The Push — "Spend Two More Days Thinking"

When the first answer is "we can't" or "it's not possible":

1. Acknowledge the difficulty — don't dismiss it
2. Push for one more round — "Spend two more days thinking about it"
3. Ask the inverse — "What WOULD make this possible?"
4. Remove a constraint — "What if we didn't have to support X?"
5. Look for the hot-staging moment — the insane idea that works first shot

"Engineers really underestimate their ability to creatively
problem-solve and come up with new ideas they otherwise never
would have thought of."

The Hot-Staging Pattern

When the team expects incremental improvement, propose a paradigm shift:

• Instead of fixing the separation maneuver → start engines while still connected
• Instead of optimizing the query → eliminate the query entirely
• Instead of caching the API response → remove the API call
• Instead of scaling the service → delete the service, embed the logic

Anti-Patterns to Kill

Applying to Current Work

When invoked, systematically challenge the problem:

Phase 1: Requirement Interrogation (Step 1)

• List every requirement/constraint mentioned
• For each: who made it? What's the evidence it's necessary?
• Mark requirements as KEEP, QUESTION, or DELETE

Phase 2: Aggressive Deletion (Step 2)

• Propose removing 50% of components/features/steps
• For each deletion: what actually breaks?
• Track what you'd need to add back (should be ~10%)

Phase 3: Simplification (Step 3)

• Take what survived deletion
• Reduce complexity by at least half
• Inline, flatten, merge

Phase 4: Speed (Step 4)

• Identify the critical path
• Parallelize, cache, prefetch
• Target 10x improvement, not 10%

Phase 5: Automation (Step 5)

• Only automate what's been simplified
• Build CI/CD for the lean version
• Auto-generate the repetitive parts

Code Search Tools

ogrep — Semantic Code Search

ogrep index .                          # Build index (first time)
ogrep query "where is auth handled"    # Semantic search
ogrep query "dead code" --mode fulltext  # Keyword search

bd — Task Tracking

bd create "Challenge: reduce auth flow from 6 steps to 2" -p 1
bd ready                               # Show unblocked tasks
bd done <id>                           # Complete a task

TEST SAFETY RULES (CRITICAL)

Same rules as /carmack — Vitest fork workers leak ~5GB memory each:

1. ALWAYS use timeout: timeout 120 npx vitest run src/specific/test.ts 2>&1
2. NEVER run full test suite: Always target specific test files
3. Maximum 3 test runs per phase: Stop and diagnose if tests keep failing
4. Clean up after tests: pgrep -f vitest | xargs kill 2>/dev/null

Instructions

When this skill is invoked:

1. Read the user's problem/feature/constraint
2. Run the 5-step Elon Algorithm IN ORDER against it
3. Push past the first "no" — when something seems impossible, spend one more round thinking
4. Produce a concrete action plan with deletions, simplifications, and the paradigm-shift option
5. Use the Task tool with subagent_type: carmack-mode-engineer for implementation (the engine is the same — the philosophy wrapper is what changes)
6. Present the "hot-staging option" — the bold move that sounds insane but might work first shot

Launch carmack-mode-engineer agent with Elon Algorithm framing applied to the user's problem.