What is keep-the-why?
keep-the-why is a Claude skill by oliver-zehentleitner that preserves the reasoning behind a codebase — decisions, workarounds, rejected alternatives. It is listed under Other and has 231 GitHub stars.
| Type | Claude skill |
|---|---|
| Author | oliver-zehentleitner |
| Repository | oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why |
| Popularity | 231 GitHub stars |
| Category | Other |
| Security | Low risk (88/100) |
| Rank | #843 of 1,262 Claude skills; #162 in Other |
| SKILL.md length | 241 lines |
| License | MIT |
| Last commit | 2026-10-16 |
| Stars this week | +9 |
Is keep-the-why safe to install?
keep-the-why scores 88/100 on the MCPMods security check: Low risk. No checks raised a concern. It passed 6 of 9 checks.
Skill results come from a static scan of its SKILL.md for instruction overrides, hidden actions, risky commands and credential access.
| Check | Result |
|---|---|
| No instruction-override phrases | Pass |
| No hidden actions | Pass |
| No pipe-to-shell installers | Pass |
| No obfuscated code | Pass |
| No destructive commands | Pass |
| Reads keys or credentials | Note |
| Makes network requests | Note |
| No shell commands | Pass |
| Installs packages | Note |
What the scan matched
- credentials:
credentials - network:
https:// - package install:
pip install
How do I install keep-the-why?
- Install with the skills CLI. Works for Claude Code and other agents that read skills.
npx skills add https://github.com/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why --skill keep-the-why
- Or copy it by hand. Claude Code loads any folder with a SKILL.md from ~/.claude/skills.
git clone https://github.com/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why cp -r keep-the-why/skills/keep-the-why ~/.claude/skills/keep-the-why
- Use it. Claude loads the skill when a task matches its description. You can also name it in your prompt.
Use the keep-the-why skill to …
Or ask Claude to set it up
Paste this into Claude Code and it installs keep-the-why for you:
Install the "keep-the-why" skill from https://github.com/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/tree/main/skills/keep-the-why into ~/.claude/skills, then tell me in one line what it does.