principle-minimize-reader-load
An agent skill by cursor, from cursor/plugins. Tags: analysis, code-quality, documentation, review, ui-ux.
What it does
Apply when reviewing or shaping code that's hard to trace. Count layers between question and answer, and hidden state in the reader's head; collapse one-caller wrappers and shrink mutable scope.
Install
With the skills CLI, which installs into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents:
npx skills add cursor/plugins --skill principle-minimize-reader-loadOr copy the skill folder into Claude Code's skills directory by hand (~/.claude/skills for every project, or .claude/skills inside one):
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cursor/plugins
cp -r plugins/pstack/skills/principle-minimize-reader-load ~/.claude/skills/principle-minimize-reader-loadSafety box score
Grade A, minimal risk: 0 of 100 risk points, rated 2026-10-16. The grade rates what the skill and its scripts can reach on the machine of whoever installs it, across eight categories from shell execution to secrets access. How the score works.
This skill is plain documentation guidance for code review and refactoring; it ships only a single Markdown file and no executable code. It does not touch the network, filesystem, secrets, or privileges, so the main effect is on how an agent reasons about code rather than on the machine itself.
| Category | Level | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Code & shell execution | 0 (none) | `inventory: 1 markdown file` and `SKILL.md` contain guidance only; there are no scripts, commands, or code execution paths. |
| Network access | 0 (none) | No downloads, API calls, or remote hosts are mentioned in the skill file. |
| Filesystem reach | 0 (none) | The skill is advisory text only and does not read, write, or delete files. |
| Secrets & credentials | 0 (none) | There is no handling of tokens, keys, passwords, or other credential stores. |
| Privilege & persistence | 0 (none) | No sudo, service registration, global installs, or OS/git/shell setting changes are present. |
| Instruction hijack surface | 0 (none) | The content does not tell the agent to ignore instructions, hide actions, or follow external content; it is ordinary maintainability guidance. |
| Irreversible actions | 0 (none) | The skill does not send messages, publish, deploy, delete, or otherwise act on behalf of the user. |
| Transparency | 0 (none) | There are no binaries, blobs, generated code, or unreviewable installers; the full content is readable Markdown. |
Before installing
- Confirm that `SKILL.md` is the only shipped file and that you are comfortable with a documentation-only skill.
- No runtime setup is needed; there are no scripts or network dependencies to audit.
Rated 2026-10-16 by an automated review of 1 file from the skill's repository.
Source
- Repository
- cursor/plugins (all skills from this repository)
- Path
- pstack/skills/principle-minimize-reader-load/SKILL.md
- Branch
- main
- Collection
- cursor
- Updated
- 2026-09-23
Related skills
- review-walkthrough — Generates an interactive HTML walkthrough for reviewing code changes. Use only when explicitly called.
- get-pr-comments — Fetch and summarize review comments from the active pull request
- reflect — Spawn three parallel review subagents over the active transcript, surface learnings, and route each to a concrete edit on an existing skill.
- show-me-your-work — Keep a reviewable decision trail for long-running or unattended work: a TSV log with one row per decision (what, why, evidence, result).
- thermo-nuclear-code-quality-review — Run an extremely strict maintainability review for abstraction quality, giant files, and spaghetti-condition growth.
- what-did-i-get-done — Summarize authored commits over a user-specified time period into a concise update