todo-app/refactor_claude_todo.md

Refactor TODO — enforce the 250-line file cap

This file is a ready-to-use prompt. Paste it to Claude, or open this repo and say "do refactor_claude_todo". It is self-contained: everything needed to execute is below. Generated 2026-08-14 from a measured survey of every repo.

Goal

Every file in this repo must be at most 250 lines — source, tests, and prose (.md/.txt/.rst/.tex) alike — and must stay that way forever, enforced by a gate that fails the commit, not by a note anyone can ignore.

Why: a file that cannot be read in one piece forces re-reads and partial edits, which is the single largest avoidable cost in an LLM-assisted workflow. Aim by churn, not size alone — refactoring pays where code is read and changed often (Fowler, refactoring economic benefit).

Scope in this repo

• 19 files currently exceed 250 lines (of 115 eligible files).
• 8,691 lines sit in violation; longest file is 925 lines.

Exempt (do NOT split these):

• generated files — *.g.dart, *.freezed.dart, *.gr.dart, **/l10n/generated/**, anything with a GENERATED header
• markup — .html, .css, .scss
• data files — .json, .yaml, .csv, wordlists and other data-ish .txt (mean line length under 25 chars)

Violations, highest ROI first

ROI = lines x commits in the last year. Work top-down; a long file nobody edits has near-zero payoff and should not be first.

lines	commits/yr	kind	file
739	19	code	lib/ui/capture_screen.dart
660	17	code	test/capture_screen_test.dart
702	10	code	lib/ui/note_editor.dart
677	9	code	test/note_repository_test.dart
925	6	prose	CLAUDE.md
391	13	code	test/settings_screen_test.dart
429	8	code	lib/data/note_repository.dart
502	6	code	test/note_editor_test.dart
356	7	code	test/sync_service_test.dart
402	5	code	test/wrapper_server_test.dart
256	7	code	lib/ui/notes_list_screen.dart
253	7	code	bin/todo_desktop.dart
347	4	code	test/notes_list_screen_test.dart
336	4	code	lib/desktop/wrapper_server.dart
405	1	code	test/port_guard_test.dart

(4 further files over 250 lines not listed — re-run the survey for the full set.)

How to split

• Python — extract cohesive helpers into sibling modules; keep the public API and imports stable.
• Shell — split into lib/*.sh sourced by a thin entry script. Keep set -euo pipefail in each.
• Dart / TypeScript — extract widgets/components into their own files.
• Tests — split by test-group into sibling files (foo.test.ts -> foo.parsing.test.ts, foo.render.test.ts). Coverage must not drop.
• Docs — split into topic files under docs/ with an index. For an oversized CLAUDE.md, move detail into referenced docs so the always-loaded part shrinks.

Do not game the cap: no one-lining, no deleting tests, no moving code into an exempt extension, no # noqa-style suppressions.

Make it permanent (required — this is the point)

A refactor without a gate silently regrows. Before this task is done:

1. Wire the shared gate ~/utils/scripts/check_file_length.sh into this repo's .pre-commit-config.yaml as a local hook. If the repo has no pre-commit config, add a minimal one.
2. The hook checks files in the commit (not the whole tree), so unrelated commits never break, and it fails — exit 1, not a warning.
3. No baseline file and no allowlist. Those are suppressions.
4. If this repo has CI (.github/workflows), add the same check there so it also fails on push.

Done condition

• bash ~/utils/scripts/check_file_length.sh --all from this repo root exits 0.
• The repo's own test suite and coverage bar are still green.
• pre-commit run --files <changed files> passes.
• A deliberately over-250-line test file, staged, makes git commit fail.
• For a deployed daemon/app: the entry point still actually runs.

Verify

Mobile is the primary platform: verify with an APK on the phone via the phone-deploy skill, not on desktop.