Think-in-Code Skill
Principle
1 Bash script = N Read calls avoided.
When you'd read 10 files sequentially to extract a summary, you waste tokens loading full contents into context. Instead: 1 shell pipeline returns the compact aggregated result.
Heuristic: if your task is "for each file in set, compute/extract X, then aggregate" → write the script. Reserve Read for targeted inspection of a specific file you already know matters.
5 Runnable Patterns
1. File size audit (> 100 lines violations)
find . -type f \( -name "*.ts" -o -name "*.tsx" -o -name "*.py" -o -name "*.php" \) \
-not -path "*/node_modules/*" -not -path "*/vendor/*" \
| xargs wc -l 2>/dev/null \
| awk '$1 > 100 && $2 != "total" {print $1, $2}' \
| sort -rn | head -20
2. Multi-grep symbols (compact JSON)
rg --json -g '*.ts' -g '*.tsx' 'export (function|class|const) (\w+)' src/ \
| jq -r 'select(.type=="match") | "\(.data.path.text):\(.data.line_number) \(.data.lines.text)"' \
| head -50
3. Dependencies with versions
# Node
jq -r '.dependencies, .devDependencies | to_entries[] | "\(.key)@\(.value)"' package.json 2>/dev/null
# PHP
jq -r '.require, ."require-dev" | to_entries[] | "\(.key)@\(.value)"' composer.json 2>/dev/null
4. Error log scan
grep -rEn 'ERROR|FATAL|Exception|panic:|stack trace' \
--include="*.log" logs/ 2>/dev/null \
| tail -30
5. Lines of code by extension
find . -type f \( -name "*.ts" -o -name "*.tsx" -o -name "*.js" -o -name "*.py" -o -name "*.php" \) \
-not -path "*/node_modules/*" -not -path "*/vendor/*" -not -path "*/.git/*" \
-exec wc -l {} + \
| awk '{ext=$2; sub(/.*\./,"",ext); sum[ext]+=$1} END {for (e in sum) print sum[e], e}' \
| sort -rn
Anti-Pattern
Do NOT Read 10 files sequentially to count their lines, list their exports, or check their size. That is ~6KB context per file = ~60KB wasted for a result that fits in 1KB.
WRONG: Read(f1.ts) → Read(f2.ts) → ... → Read(f10.ts) → manual tally
RIGHT: Bash(find ... | xargs wc -l | awk ...) → 1 compact table
Before / After
Task: "Find files > 100 lines in src/."
- Before: 10 × Read full file → ~60KB tokens consumed, then mental wc.
- After: 1 ×
find src -name '*.ts' | xargs wc -l | awk '$1>100'→ ~1KB result.
~60× reduction. Use the script.