Purpose
The multica-ai/andrej-karpathy-skills repository draws on Andrej Karpathy’s observations about common AI coding mistakes to create a CLAUDE.md file. It also includes a karpathy-guidelines Skill and a Cursor rule. Its four principles are to clarify before coding, keep solutions simple, make only necessary changes, and define verifiable success criteria. multica-ai maintains the repository; Karpathy supplied the observations it cites, but did not author or endorse these files.
When to use it
Use these guidelines as project instructions when an agent tends to assume requirements, overbuild a small change, or edit unrelated files. Harness Hub describes them as a relatively light behavioral prompt. We think they fit those situations, but have not tested whether installing them reduces mistakes.
Example
If you ask an agent to fix duplicate upload submissions, the guidance would prompt it to establish when duplicates happen, define an observable success condition, change only the relevant submission path, and, where useful, reproduce the bug with a test before verifying the fix. This example shows how the four rules might shape the work; we have not measured the result.
Limitations
These are text instructions; they cannot automatically prevent mistaken changes. The source file acknowledges that caution can slow trivial work, so a typo fix need not follow every step. Merge the guidance with your project rules and resolve any conflicts. The README and Skill file say MIT, but we did not find a separate LICENSE file in the repository, so we have not independently confirmed its license status.
Installation
The repository README gives these Claude Code plugin commands:
/plugin marketplace add forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills
/plugin install andrej-karpathy-skills@karpathy-skillsThe README still names the older forrestchang path. When we checked, its GitHub repository URL redirected to multica-ai/andrej-karpathy-skills; it is not a separate official project. For use in one project, review the current CLAUDE.md before merging it with your instructions. See the Cursor guide for Cursor. Do not overwrite existing team rules. This site shows the commands but does not run them.