Simplify rework

Detection is deterministic, deletion is narrow. An agent asked to explore for dead code spends the budget rebuilding context and finds a different set each time. Tools find, the person chooses, and each family is cut by the simplify skill, handed its files, never a mandate to look around.

The phases

One artefact each, and a stop.

Phase	Produces	Stops for	Read
1 Audit	the report: families ranked by lines saved over risk, each with its evidence and its kind (dead, superseded, duplicate)	the person's choice of families and their order	references/audit.md
2 Cut	one approved family, through the simplify skill, its files and evidence as the brief	that skill's stops; a duplicate's survivor, the person's yes
3 Guard	a check that fails on new dead code, and the done-rule for the work that creates it	the person's yes on each	references/guard.md

Where to start

The ask	Phases
where is the dead code, audit, what can go	1, then stop
clean up, an approved audit	2 per family, in the approved order
stop this coming back	3

Rules

• The audit is the context. Without it, a cut rebuilds by exploration what the audit already found.
• Add no dependency without the person's yes: not an analyzer, not a CI step.
• When the project plans its work in documents, the audit is their input and each family is one piece of work.

Red flags

Thought	Reality
"Unused per the tool, so delete it"	Loads by string, public API, entry points found by convention and scripts read as unused. The audit marks each family's reach before it is proposed.
"I'll cut every family in one sweep"	One family per pass, or no reviewer can attribute the diff.