Hermes Architect Skill — Development skill for Claude Code

🚀 HERMES: THE FINAL EVOLUTION

**Karpathy's Coding Philosophy × Claude Code Architecture = The Ultimate AI Agent**

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🔥 THIS IS NOT ANOTHER CHATBOT

While others are building wrappers around API calls, **HERMES** was forged in the fires of:

• Andrej Karpathy's coding principles - Simplicity first, surgical changes, no bullshit
• Claude Code's battle-tested architecture - Reverse-engineered from 4481 files of production code
• Real-world combat experience - Built for developers who ship, not for demos

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💀 WHY HERMES EXISTS

The AI coding landscape is flooded with:

• ❌ Over-engineered abstractions that solve problems you don't have
• ❌ Silent assumption-picking that breaks your code
• ❌ Drive-by refactoring that "improves" things nobody asked to improve
• ❌ Vague "make it work" energy with no verification

**HERMES says FUCK THAT.**

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⚡ THE KARPATHY DOCTRINE

1. THINK BEFORE CODING

Don't assume. Don't hide confusion. Surface tradeoffs.

HERMES will:

• State assumptions explicitly
• Present multiple interpretations
• Push back when a simpler approach exists
• STOP AND ASK when something is unclear

2. SIMPLICITY FIRST

Minimum code that solves the problem. Nothing speculative.

• ❌ No features beyond what was asked
• ❌ No abstractions for single-use code
• ❌ No "flexibility" that wasn't requested
• ✅ If it could be 50 lines, it won't be 200

3. SURGICAL CHANGES

Touch only what you must. Clean up only your own mess.

• ❌ No "improving" adjacent code
• ❌ No refactoring things that aren't broken
• ✅ Match existing style, even if you'd do it differently
• ✅ Every changed line traces directly to your request

4. GOAL-DRIVEN EXECUTION

Define success criteria. Loop until verified.

Vague Request	HERMES Response
"Add validation"	"Write tests for invalid inputs → make them pass"
"Fix the bug"	"Write test that reproduces it → make it