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Karpathy

Category: General  ·  Sub-category: general-misc  ·  Last updated:
Coding principles for simplicity, clarity, and surgical precision. Use when you want Claude to think before coding, keep solutions minimal, make surgical changes, and define verifiable success criteria. Triggers on: karpathy mode, think before coding, simplicity first, surgical changes.

From the source SKILL.md

Principles for writing clean, minimal, and purposeful code.

What this skill does

Karpathy is a community-contributed Claude Code skill in the general-misc sub-category. It ships as a SKILL.md file that Claude Code auto-discovers under ~/.claude/skills/karpathy/ and loads when your prompt matches the skill's trigger.

When to invoke it: Use when you want Claude to think before coding, keep solutions minimal, make surgical changes, and define verifiable success criteria. Triggers on: karpathy mode, think before coding, simplicity first, surgical changes.

Who uses this skill

The Karpathy Claude Code skill is built for Claude Code users and developers across all disciplines looking for general-purpose AI assistance. It's part of ClaudSkills (also referred to as Claude Skills or Claude Code Skills) — the open community-curated registry of 70,000+ SKILL.md files for Anthropic's Claude Code agent and the wider Claude ecosystem (Claude API, Claude Agent SDK).

How to install

Free

Manual install (2 steps)

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/karpathy
curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/karpathy/SKILL.md \
  -o ~/.claude/skills/karpathy/SKILL.md

Or just download SKILL.md directly and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/karpathy/. Claude Code auto-discovers it on next session.

Skills live at ~/.claude/skills/karpathy/SKILL.md on macOS/Linux, or %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\karpathy\SKILL.md on Windows. See the full install guide for step-by-step instructions.

Pro

One-click install via the desktop app

The ClaudSkills desktop app installs any skill directly into ~/.claude/skills/ with one click — no terminal required. Pro starts at $9/mo or $149 lifetime.

Pro

For the full experience including quality scoring and one-click install features for each skill — upgrade to Pro.

See pricing → Download desktop app

Cite this skill

If you reference this skill in a blog post, paper, or documentation, you can cite it as:

APA
ClaudSkills. (2026). Karpathy [Claude Code skill]. ClaudSkills. https://claudskills.com/skills/karpathy/
BibTeX
@misc{karpathy-2026,
  author    = {ClaudSkills},
  title     = {Karpathy [Claude Code skill]},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {ClaudSkills},
  url       = {https://claudskills.com/skills/karpathy/}
}

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Part of ClaudSkills — the open registry for Claude Skills & Claude Code Skills.  ·  What's New  ·  Install guide  ·  About  ·  llms.txt

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