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AgentCompany/builtin-skills/software-engineer/clean-code/references/name-avoid-disinformation.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

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---
title: Avoid Disinformation in Names
impact: CRITICAL
impactDescription: prevents incorrect mental models
tags: name, disinformation, misleading, types
---
## Avoid Disinformation in Names
Avoid names that encode false information. Do not refer to a grouping as a "List" unless it is actually a List. Avoid names that vary in small ways that are hard to distinguish.
**Incorrect (misleading type information):**
```java
// Not actually a List, it's a Map
private Map<String, Account> accountList;
// These look almost identical - easy to confuse
private String XYZControllerForEfficientHandlingOfStrings;
private String XYZControllerForEfficientStorageOfStrings;
// Lowercase L looks like 1, uppercase O looks like 0
int a = l;
if (O == l)
a = O1;
```
**Correct (accurate and distinguishable):**
```java
// Accurately describes the data structure
private Map<String, Account> accountsByName;
// Clearly distinguishable names
private String stringProcessingController;
private String stringStorageController;
// Clear variable names
int result = leftValue;
if (originalValue == leftValue)
result = outputValue;
```
Reference: [Clean Code, Chapter 2: Meaningful Names](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/clean-code-a/9780136083238/)