More is less

More Is Less

Some code is cheaper written long now than cheap today. At a structural boundary — a schema, a data model, an integration or variant seam, a contract — the lazy shape looks smaller but bills you later as a migration, a backfill, or shotgun surgery across the generic layer. This skill is the disciplined case for paying that cost up front: build the seam, the extension point, the value type now, so the next variant is additive instead of surgery.

It is the deliberate counterweight to lazy minimalism — and it refines, never overrides, bardak:less-is-more. The split is sharp: structure at a boundary is built right; runtime machinery is deferred.

Announce at start: "Using more-is-less — investing structure now at this boundary so the next change is additive."

Governing Rule

Invest in structure now exactly when the cheap version would cost a future migration — and the future need is named, not imagined. Defer runtime machinery (caches, locks, retries, guards) until a real failure demands it.

Under-abstraction and over-abstraction are equally defects. This skill targets only the first, and only at a boundary.

When to Use

• A schema / data-model / persistence decision — the highest-stakes boundary; the wrong shape forces a painful reparenting later.
• An integration or provider/variant seam where a second (third, Nth) variant is foreseeable.
• A public contract or boundary type others will depend on.
• A smell saying the seam is already wrong: if type == "x" dispatch, a handler table keyed by variant, the generic/shared layer importing a concrete one, stringly-typed or positional-tuple boundaries.
• Not for: runtime machinery without a measured failure, one-off scripts, a localized function body, or "we might need it someday" with no named need — that is speculation; stay lazy.

The Earn Test — all four, or stay lazy

1. It is structure, not machinery. A boundary, schema, seam, or type — not a cache, lock, retry, or guard. Machinery waits for a measured failure.
2. The future need is named. A stated next variant, a known second consumer, persistence that must evolve. "Might someday" is not named — that is speculation; stay minimal (YAGNI).
3. The cheap version fails the N+1 test. Ask: what happens at variant N+1? If adding the second case means editing the generic/shared layer, the seam is in the wrong place — build the port now.
4. The cheap version forces future ceremony. If shipping it small now means a later backfill, migration, new index, or reparenting, the cheap design is the expensive one.

If any fails, you are over-engineering — stop, and let bardak:less-is-more and the minimal default govern.

The Mentality — recognize the shape, apply the solidified form

When a recurring shape appears, name it and reach for the form that is already battle-tested: it states intent and is cheaper to maintain than a clever bespoke version. The shapes worth knowing:

• Behavior keyed by a type/variant (if provider == …, switch on kind) → one port: an interface/Protocol the generic layer talks to, with concrete implementations registering themselves behind a registry/factory. Adding a variant becomes additive — no edit to the generic layer.
• A generic model sprouting special-case columns/branches → a generic extension point (a metadata/JSON field, or a dedicated model), not another special case.
• An entity that may later need merge/dedup → a canonical entity + alias/identity shape, so the future operation repoints instead of reparents.
• Primitive obsession / stringly-typed → an enum over string literals, a value type over a bare str (a UserId is not a str).
• Positional/tuple returns → a named/frozen record — an order-swap in a tuple is a silent failure.
• A long procedural blob → extract small, intent-revealing methods or a class.

For machinery you have justified, reach for a well-tested library over a hand-rolled version (a retry/backoff/circuit-breaker lib beats a bespoke loop).

Boundaries Are One-Directional

The generic core stays generic: shared/core models, services, and hot paths carry no variant-specific fields or logic — those live behind the port. The tell that a boundary leaked is not only a column; it is an import or an equality check. If the generic layer imports a concrete variant or compares against its name, the seam is already broken.

Red Flags — STOP, you are over-applying

Thought	Reality
"Make it generic in case we need it"	No named need = speculation. Build it when the need is named; stay minimal until then.
"Add a lock/retry/guard to be safe"	Runtime machinery. Defer until a failure is measured.
"This abstraction is elegant"	Elegance isn't a justification. Name the future cost it buys down, or drop it.
"Fold these three refactors into this PR"	Investment isn't scope creep. Split orthogonal refactors out.
"It needs a migration and a backfill, but it works"	Ceremony is a design smell. A different shape likely removes the need — reconsider the design first.

Red Flags — STOP, you are under-applying

Thought	Reality
"Just one more if type == … branch"	That branch is the smell. If N+1 edits the generic layer, build the port now. Don't cite YAGNI to dodge a real seam.
"Ship the small schema now, migrate later"	"Later" is a backfill and a reparent. If the future shape is named, build the additive shape now.
"Return a tuple, it's fewer lines"	An order-swap is a silent bug. A named record is the cheaper one.

Common Mistakes

• Treating every repetition as a reason to abstract — the gate is a named future need crossing a boundary, not a repetition count.
• Adding runtime machinery with no measured failure — that is the counterweight skill's job to refuse.
• Building the port but leaving a concrete import or name-equality in the generic layer — the boundary still leaks.
• Scaling machinery beyond the scale that actually exists.

Pairs with: bardak:less-is-more (the counterweight it refines — that one governs runtime complexity and reduction, this one governs structure at a boundary), bardak:no-silent-errors (the typed seams and named records here exist so a failure cannot be expressed silently), and bardak:adr (record the structural choice and the named future need that justified it).