Pristine

Pristine cover

Write everything as if it were being written for the first time.

A cross-platform agent skill that enforces the First-Time Principle — the
discipline of landing every change in its final form: no patches, no
"what"-comments, no leftovers, no local/deployed drift.

Works with Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, and OpenClaw (open Agent
Skill format).

Why

In AI-assisted development, patches compound differently than in
human-only teams:

Code is rewritten often, but docs and memory are the only bridge across
sessions — a stale note makes the next agent decide on a false premise.
Agents read the whole file, not a diff — every leftover special case
dilutes the signal of the real design.
A patch that "works" is the easiest thing to reproduce, because it
requires the least understanding. Each round of patching teaches the next
session to patch.

Pristine is the counterweight: each change, made as if for the first time,
keeps the system evolving toward clarity instead of entropy.

The four laws

Law	Meaning
No patching	Fix the root cause, not the symptom. No `if` special cases, no copied-and-tweaked logic, no switches that route around a problem. Rewrite when the patch pile is worse than a clean rewrite.
Code explains itself	Names carry the "what". Comments only say "why": business rules, constraints, history traps. No explanatory comments, no commented-out code blocks.
No residue	No backups, drafts, dead code, or intermediate states. Superseded rules are updated in place, never appended as "as of…" notes.
Deployment parity	What runs in production is exactly what was reviewed locally. No remote-only quick fixes — the repo must keep representing reality.
Session cost	A session that grows without bound is the same entropy as a file that grows without bound. Around 15 turns, propose a reset.

Install

Copy SKILL.md into your agent's skills directory:

# Claude Code
mkdir -p .claude/skills/pristine
cp SKILL.md .claude/skills/pristine/

# OpenAI Codex
mkdir -p .agents/skills/pristine
cp SKILL.md .agents/skills/pristine/

# OpenCode
mkdir -p .opencode/skills/pristine
cp SKILL.md .opencode/skills/pristine/

Usage

The skill activates automatically when you start implementation, refactor,
or bug-fix work, and whenever the "just patch it" urge appears. You can also
invoke it by name:

pristine — the formal name ("we work in pristine mode")
virgin / first-time — aliases, recognized semantically via the skill
description

Session watch (optional companion)

scripts/session-watch.js enforces the 15-turn
rule mechanically: it counts user turns in the current session and prints a
reminder when the threshold is crossed. Wire it as a Claude Code Stop hook:

"hooks": { "Stop": [ { "matcher": "", "hooks": [ { "type": "command",
  "command": "node /path/to/scripts/session-watch.js --threshold 15" } ] } ] }

The script reads the session transcript path from the hook's stdin — no
session discovery, no hardcoded paths, exit code always 0 (a reminder, not
a gate).

Examples

See examples/before-after.md for
patch-instinct vs. first-time-move side-by-side comparisons.

pristine-skill