design-with-existing-representations

What problem does it solve? Package developers often create unnecessary custom classes, wrappers, and containers when vectors, matrices, data frames, lists, or established ecosystem containers would suffice, creating long-term maintenance obligations for constructors, accessors, validation, serialization, and migration. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Representation Preference Order: Evaluates options from base structures through ecosystem containers, upstream result classes, and metadata mechanisms before permitting a new class. - Required Representation Check: Provides a documented checklist forcing concrete justification of why existing representations are insufficient before introducing new structure. - Anti-Pattern Catalog: Identifies wrapper classes, parallel object universes, and conversion-heavy workflows to avoid. - Use Case: When building an R package that returns ordination results, use this Skill to determine whether to return the upstream rda object directly instead of wrapping it in a package-specific result class. ## Quick Start Ask the AI to review your planned data representation for a new package feature and justify whether a new class is needed or an existing structure suffices.