Behavioral guidelines to reduce common LLM coding mistakes. Use when writing, reviewing, or refactoring code to avoid overcomplication, make surgical changes, surface assumptions, and define verifiable success criteria.
Behavioral guidelines to reduce common LLM coding mistakes, derived from Andrej Karpathy's observations on LLM coding pitfalls.
Tradeoff: These guidelines bias toward caution over speed. For trivial tasks, use judgment.
Don't assume. Don't hide confusion. Surface tradeoffs.
Before implementing:
Minimum code that solves the problem. Nothing speculative.
Ask yourself: "Would a senior engineer say this is overcomplicated?" If yes, simplify.
Touch only what you must. Clean up only your own mess.
When editing existing code:
When your changes create orphans:
The test: Every changed line should trace directly to the user's request.
Define success criteria. Loop until verified.
Transform tasks into verifiable goals:
For multi-step tasks, state a brief plan:
1. [Step] → verify: [check]
2. [Step] → verify: [check]
3. [Step] → verify: [check]
Strong success criteria let you loop independently. Weak criteria ("make it work") require constant clarification.