# Layers that don't earn their keep

Prompt · Architecture and hidden complexity · A03

Finds extra layers of code you could delete so the code, and the agents reading it, get simpler.

## Prompt

```text
Identify abstractions that no longer earn their complexity. Find wrappers, factories, inheritance, and generic utilities that make the application harder to understand than a simpler implementation would.
```

**What it returns:** For each candidate: callers count, what deleting it would move where (the deletion test), and what tests would change.

**Skip it when:** Right after a cleanup of the code, or when the layer walls off an outside company's toolkit.

**Tools:** Repository access only.

**Watch for:** Agents call thin adapters redundant when they exist to isolate an unstable SDK or give tests a seam.

**Changes:** Changes nothing

**Sessions:** One session

## Skills

- [improve-codebase-architecture](https://www.atlasscope.dev/skills/improve-codebase-architecture): Scan a codebase for deepening opportunities, present them as a visual HTML report, then grill through whichever one you pick.

## Related

- [Old design choices that now cost you](https://www.atlasscope.dev/prompts/old-design-choices-that-now-cost-you): Separates old design choices that now cost real time or bugs from ones that are only out of fashion.
- [Simpler first](https://www.atlasscope.dev/prompts/simpler-first)
- [Which database objects no longer earn their keep?](https://www.atlasscope.dev/prompts/which-database-objects-no-longer-earn-their-keep): The list of views, functions and triggers has grown hard to reason about.

Source: https://www.atlasscope.dev/prompts/layers-that-dont-earn-their-keep