Two New Claude Code Commands Worth Knowing: `simplify` and `batch`

Two Claude Code commands that parallelize the boring work: simplify for pre-PR cleanup and batch for large-scale migrations. Both spawn multiple agents in parallel so the human isn't the bottleneck.

simplify — Pre-PR Cleanup, Automatically

Finish your code changes, run simplify before opening the PR. Under the hood it:

• Spawns parallel agents to audit your changes
• Finds duplicated logic and consolidates it
• Fixes naming inconsistencies
• Removes unnecessary complexity — over-abstracted helpers, dead branches, accidental verbosity

Think of it as the cleanup pass you usually skip because you're ready to ship. Now it's one command, runs in the background, and the review-ready diff is waiting for you.

When to use it: every PR. It's cheap, it's fast, and it catches the stuff code review usually wastes time on.

batch — Parallel Migrations

Point batch at a migration task ("upgrade all usages of X to Y across this codebase") and it spins up dozens of agents in parallel. Each agent:

1. Works in isolation — its own sandbox, own workspace
2. Tests its own changes — doesn't hand you something that doesn't build
3. Opens a PR when done

Large migrations used to be either a heroic week of manual grep-and-replace or a single long Claude Code session that chewed through the whole codebase serially. With batch, the work parallelizes across dozens of isolated agents — each owning a scoped slice of the migration and producing an independently reviewable PR.

Why Parallelism Matters Here

The shift these commands represent: the limit isn't model capability, it's how you structure the work. A single Claude Code session thinking about 200 files in sequence is slow and context-bloated. Twenty parallel sessions each thinking about 10 files is fast and focused.

• simplify parallelizes cleanup across concerns (naming, dedup, complexity)
• batch parallelizes migration across scope (per-file, per-module)

Both move work off the critical path of the human reviewer.

Key Takeaways

• simplify runs before every PR — parallel agents find duplication, fix naming, and trim complexity
• batch handles large migrations by spinning up dozens of isolated agents that each test and open their own PR
• Both commands are about parallelism — stop running Claude Code serially when you can run it wide
• Treat these as standard Monday-morning plumbing, not exotic features

Resources

• Claude Code — Anthropic's terminal-based agentic coding tool
• Claude Code Docs — Full command and plugin reference