sixwhyo

Name: sixwhyo
Author: Unclaimed listing

Developer tools

A six-year-old code reviewer who’s not afraid to ask “why?”

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What it does

sixwhyo is a code reviewer tool designed to help developers question decisions that lead to overly complicated code. Its premise is simple: approach code “through kids eyes” and relentlessly ask “why?”—with the goal of catching over-engineering, confusing naming, and unnecessary complexity.

The intended use case is reviewing source files and refactors where layers of abstractions, patterns, and indirection may have made a straightforward task harder to read and maintain. The site positions sixwhyo as a reviewer that prioritizes simplicity and readability, and explicitly aims to reduce time spent figuring out code.

sixwhyo provides three related skills (modes) that you can invoke depending on what you need. The base “sixwhyo” mode acts as an always-on reviewer that stays active until told to stop, and focuses on calling out complexity, naming issues, and over-engineering. “sixwhyo-summarize” produces a short 1–2 line summary of the request/file—e.g., a quick verdict on how a file, class, or function looks overall. “sixwhyo-simplify” is a one-shot review-and-rewrite mode: it rewrites code according to the language specification while trying to keep the result simple and readable.

The workflow is built around lightweight triggers: you can activate the reviewer (“6yo”), run a one-shot simplify pass (“sixwhyo-simplify”), or request a brief summary (“sixwhyo-summarize”). The website includes an example where a heavily abstracted calculator implementation (multiple classes, an abstract base class, and a factory) is critiqued with specific “why” questions (file naming mismatch, too many classes for basic arithmetic, unnecessary factory/class indirection). The simplified output shows a more direct function-based implementation that keeps essential correctness checks (like divide-by-zero) without extra structure.

Installation is provided via a command that installs from a GitHub repository, with a note to consult the README for other harnesses (OpenCode, Oh My Pi, Codex).

Launch details