tidy-diff-docs

Development

Clean up the documentation and code comments introduced by a diff before merging. Strips implementation details, performance micro-claims, and restated or duplicate explanations from doc comments while keeping the caller-facing contract intact. Use when reviewing or preparing a PR's doc/regular comments, or when a reviewer asks to tidy up the docs and comments in a change.

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Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/egraphs-good/egglog/blob/HEAD/.claude/skills/tidy-diff-docs/SKILL.md

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Tidy diff docs

A doc comment is a contract for the caller: what the item does, what it guarantees, what the caller must uphold, and what can go wrong. It is not the place to narrate how the thing is implemented or how fast it is — that information rots, duplicates the code, and buries the contract.

This skill trims the comments added or changed by a diff down to that contract and removes restated text. It matches the repo rule in CLAUDE.md: "Keep your documentation concise and avoid duplicate information."

Two guardrails:

Scope edits to the diff. Do not rewrite untouched docs elsewhere.
Never drop information the caller needs to use the item correctly.

Process

Collect the changed comments: git diff main...HEAD (or the working / staged diff under review). Look at every added or modified ///, //!, and // line.
For each one, apply the rules below.
Re-run make fixnits and the relevant tests. Intra-doc links such as [`Foo`] must still resolve after the edits.

Strip these from doc comments

Allocation / memory strategy — "no per-row allocation", "stays off the heap", "one allocation, often pooled", "never touches the heap".
Internal data structures — "backed by a SmallVec<[_; 8]>", "wraps a TaggedRowBuffer", "would force a boxed dyn Iterator" — unless the type actually appears in the public signature the caller sees.
Performance micro-claims — "the monomorphized fast path", "as cheap as a direct streaming scan", "measurably slows the scan".
Rationale for an internal design choice — "We deliberately do not implement IntoIterator because …". If it is worth recording at all, it is a plain // comment next to the code, not public rustdoc.
Restatement of what is already documented nearby — if the type's doc already says its rows are (inputs, output), a method returning that type need not repeat the shape; if a parameter's meaning is obvious from its name and type, do not spell it out again.

Keep these

What the item does and the shape of what it returns.
Preconditions, invariants the caller must uphold, and the error / panic conditions.
Units, ordering, and edge-case behavior (empty input, duplicates, etc.).
Intra-doc links to related items.
Safety requirements on unsafe items.

Examples (from PR #901)

Before:

/// Call `f` on each [`Enode`] of a constructor / relation table. Rows
/// stream in batches, so there is no whole-table copy and no per-row
/// allocation — it is as cheap as a direct streaming backend scan.
/// Errors with `WrongSubtype` if `name` is a function table. To stop
/// part way through, use [`Read::constructor_enodes_while`].

After:

/// Call `f` on each [`Enode`] of a constructor / relation table.
/// Errors with `WrongSubtype` if `name` is a function. To stop early,
/// use [`Read::constructor_enodes_while`].

Before:

/// One enode from [`Read::constructor_enodes`]. Columns are raw
/// [`Value`]s borrowed from the streaming scan buffer, so there is no
/// per-row allocation. (We deliberately do *not* implement
/// `IntoIterator`: expressing its associated `IntoIter` type would
/// force a boxed `dyn Iterator`, whose per-row virtual dispatch slows
/// the scan.)

After:

/// One enode from [`Read::constructor_enodes`]. Columns are raw
/// [`Value`]s; convert with [`Core::value_to_base`].