Linus Code Taste Review

About

The Linus Code Taste Review skill transforms Claude into a sharp, opinionated code auditor inspired by Linus Torvalds' legendary programming philosophy. It prioritizes clean data structures over complex logic, enforces a strict three-level indentation limit, and eliminates 'defensive' coding habits like unnecessary null checks or post-return mutations. Ideal for refactoring legacy code or performing high-level quality audits, this skill helps developers strip away technical debt and 'special cases' to reach a state of elegant, maintainable, and high-performance engineering.

Key Features

• Strict indentation enforcement with a maximum of 3 levels
• 81 GitHub stars
• Enforcement of single-responsibility functions under 50 lines
• Elimination of defensive 'special case' logic and unnecessary null checks
• Early validation patterns and fail-fast logic implementation
• Detection and removal of post-return mutations and string concatenations

Use Cases

• Performing aggressive code quality audits before merging major pull requests
• Refactoring complex legacy functions with deep nesting and technical debt
• Simplifying data structures to reduce runtime type checking and defensive logic