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AgentCompany/builtin-skills/software-engineer/clean-code/references/cmt-avoid-redundant.md
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ZacharyZhang-NY e74dafcd36 Silence render-disposed spam, unbreak bundled skills, drop board wake
Three independently ugly bugs that all fed the same log flood:

* Electron's `WebFrameMain.send` writes every "Render frame was disposed"
  to stderr via `console.error`. When the worker fans a second
  agent-event past a reloading renderer, we produced thousands of
  identical lines and stalled the main loop on stderr I/O. Added a
  `mainFrame.detached` guard so the send is short-circuited before
  Electron's own catch block fires, and installed a targeted filter in
  `suppress-warnings.ts` (now actually imported from the entry point)
  so the specific `console.error("Error sending from webFrameMain:"…)`
  noise never reaches the terminal. Any other payload still surfaces.

* `dispatchAgentMessage` accepted the human-reader sentinel as a wake
  target when an agent replied to `__board__` — `wakeAgentIfPossible`
  then called `db.getAgent("__board__")`, threw, and the dispatcher
  kept repeating on every send. Strip `HUMAN_SENDER_ID` at
  `resolveMessageWakeTargets`, and keep a defense-in-depth guard in the
  heartbeat so a stray caller (future automation fan-out) cannot
  reintroduce the crash.

* Pi's skills loader rejects any SKILL.md whose frontmatter `name`
  diverges from its parent directory. The four bundled `my-writing-style`
  copies declared `name: writing-style-skill`, so every install emitted
  a warning and dropped the skill. They also lived as orphan gitlinks
  (mode 160000 without .gitmodules), and the global `*.md` gitignore
  hid every other SKILL.md from version control. Fixed the frontmatter
  to match the dir, converted the dangling submodules to plain trees,
  and allowlisted `builtin-skills/**/*.md` so a fresh clone carries the
  catalogue instead of silently losing it.
2026-04-20 08:13:48 -04:00

1.4 KiB

title, impact, impactDescription, tags
title impact impactDescription tags
Avoid Redundant Comments HIGH eliminates noise that obscures important information cmt, redundant, noise, clutter

Avoid Redundant Comments

A comment that merely restates what the code does is worse than no comment. It adds clutter, becomes stale, and trains readers to ignore comments entirely.

Incorrect (redundant comments):

/**
 * The name of the customer
 */
private String customerName;

/**
 * Returns the name
 * @return the name
 */
public String getName() {
    return name;
}

// Check if the account is closed
if (account.isClosed()) {
    // Throw an exception
    throw new AccountClosedException();
}

/**
 * Default constructor
 */
public Account() {
}

Correct (comment only when necessary):

private String customerName;

public String getName() {
    return name;
}

if (account.isClosed()) {
    throw new AccountClosedException();
}

public Account() {
}

// Comments that add value:

// RFC 2822 date format required by legacy email parser
private static final String DATE_FORMAT = "EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z";

// Thread-safe: ConcurrentHashMap handles synchronization
private Map<String, Session> activeSessions = new ConcurrentHashMap<>();

Rule of thumb: If the comment just repeats the code in English, delete it.

Reference: Clean Code, Chapter 4: Comments