Head to head
karpathy-skills vs learn-claude-code
karpathy-skills and learn-claude-code solve the same job (Planning & reasoning), so this is a pick-one decision. karpathy-skills is our default here: Cheapest quality win on the entire list. One file, no install, works alongside everything else. 'Surgical Changes' alone stops the drive-by refactors that break a working layout while fixing something unrelated. Watch out: Ambiguous link. Two repos share this name — shareAI-lab/learn-claude-code (~66k stars, the code course) and delbaoliveira/learn-claude-code (~183 stars, an 11-lesson in-terminal course). The star profile of the surrounding links suggests the former; open the original link to be sure.
Quick read
- Editor's pick: karpathy-skills.
- No logged gotchas: karpathy-skills.
| Field | karpathy-skillsgithub.com Not yet swept | learn-claude-codegithub.com Not yet swept |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A ~65-line CLAUDE.md built around four LLM coding failure modes Karpathy identified. Adds no tools — it changes how the agent decides: surface assumptions before coding, refuse speculative abstraction, keep diffs scoped, define a verifiable stopping condition. ~203k stars. | 17 progressive lessons with runnable Python building a nano Claude-Code-like agent: agent loop, tools, permissions, context management, skill loading, task system, worktrees, MCP. Its thesis is that agency comes from model training, so your job is building tools and permissions around the model. |
| Category | Planning & reasoning | Planning & reasoning |
| Cost tier | free | free |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| Why builders pick it | Cheapest quality win on the entire list. One file, no install, works alongside everything else. 'Surgical Changes' alone stops the drive-by refactors that break a working layout while fixing something unrelated. | Background reading, not a build tool. Useful if you want to understand why the memory and cost tools below work the way they do. |
| Watch out for | not logged | Ambiguous link. Two repos share this name — shareAI-lab/learn-claude-code (~66k stars, the code course) and delbaoliveira/learn-claude-code (~183 stars, an 11-lesson in-terminal course). The star profile of the surrounding links suggests the former; open the original link to be sure. |
| How to wire it up | curl -o CLAUDE.md .../main/CLAUDE.md | not logged |
| Editor's pick | Yes | No |
Other matchups worth running
Agent endpoint: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=karpathy-skills,learn-claude-code