KISS

KISS means Keep It Simple — skip the clever version.

You will get two versions. One is plain and a little dull. The other is a one-liner that makes you feel sharp. The clever one is unread at 3 a.m. The boring if ships.

Simple is not sloppy. Simple is the smallest thing that is obviously right. YAGNI decides whether to build it. KISS decides how it looks when you do.

Readable is the feature

Code is impressive because the next person does not have to decode it. That next person is you after a nap, a teammate, and the agent that has to edit it. Clever is a tax on all three.

If you cannot say what a block does in one sentence, it is too clever. Delete it or ask for a rewrite. DRY can wait. A shared helper nobody understands is not simpler.

Ask for boring

Agents optimize for what you praise. Praise short and "smart" and you get a riddle. Say: "Prefer obvious, readable code. No clever tricks. An if beats a dense chain." Then read it back. If you would be embarrassed to commit it without comments, it is not simple yet.

At a hackathon, the clever cache around the demo query is how you spend the last hour on a bug you invented. The obvious fetch, plus a skeleton, plus a deploy, wins the room.

What this unlocks

If both versions work, keep the one you can explain. Refactor toward obvious, not toward short. Clever is a tax. Boring is a gift to morning-you.