Old Coder skill（老码农 skill）

中文说明 →

An old coder's strategy for the agent era: don't read the code — make it run the gauntlet.

A skill that makes coding agents prove their work. Instead of you reading every line, the agent pushes its code through a gauntlet of checks and hands you a test plan before coding and an evidence report after. You review those two documents, not the code.

It's plain markdown, so it works with any coding agent that follows instructions: Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, Aider, or your own agent loop.

Installation

Install old-coder:

npx skills add https://github.com/amazingang/old-coder --skill old-coder

Or manually:

• Claude Code — copy the skill into a skills folder, then invoke /old-coder or let it trigger on high-assurance requests:

  cp -r skills/old-coder ~/.claude/skills/
  # or copy it to /.claude/skills/
  

• Other agents — add skills/old-coder/SKILL.md to your AGENTS.md, rules file, or system prompt, and keep its references/ directory alongside it.

Optional companion: old-coder-api

This repository also includes a focused HTTP/JSON API design and review skill. Install it when you want compatibility, authorization, idempotency, pagination, rate-limit, and operability gates:

npx skills add https://github.com/amazingang/old-coder --skill old-coder-api

To install both skills:

npx skills add https://github.com/amazingang/old-coder --skill old-coder --skill old-coder-api

When both apply, old-coder owns workflow, approval, and evidence; old-coder-api owns the API contract, and its gate decisions become SPEC constraints and gauntlet checks.

The idea

From Uncle Bob (Robert C. Martin), on working with coding agents (original tweet):

My current strategy is to not read any of the code written by my agents. That’s the only way I can take advantage of their productivity. What I do instead is to surround the agents with extreme constraints. Unit tests, gherkin tests, QA procedures, quality metrics, mutation testing, test coverage, and a plethora of others. In the end, I have very high confidence in the code they produce because they’ve had to run the gauntlet of all of my constraints and tests.

If you're not going to read the code, the things you do read have to carry the trust instead.

How it works

flowchart LR
    SPEC["📋 SPECagent writes a test plan,you approve it"]
    RED["🔴 REDwrite a test,watch it fail"]
    GREEN["🟢 GREENwrite code untilit passes"]
    REF["🧹 REFACTORclean up,tests untouched"]
    G["🛡️ GAUNTLETrun every check"]
    EV["📊 EVIDENCEyou read the report,not the code"]
    SPEC --> RED --> GREEN --> REF --> G --> EV
    REF -. next behavior .-> RED

You read two documents:

• SPEC (before any code) — concrete examples of what the code must and must not do, plus which tools the agent wants to install. Approving it is the single yes/no you give.
• EVIDENCE (after the code) — real numbers from one final fresh run, rerunnable yourself with a single command.

The gauntlet in between: