REFACTORING OBJECTIVE
Straighten the module boundaries in the reporting package: break the dependency cycle between data access and formatting.
Refactoring goal: architecture cleanup — straighten boundaries and dependencies within the existing design.
Change how the code is built — never what the code does. If a transformation cannot be made safely with the available information, leave that code unchanged and say why.
EXISTING CODE CONTEXT
Code context: none specified — treat unknown consumers as possible and unstated requirements as existing.
Language: not specified — infer it from the code and stay consistent with it.
Code to refactor:
```
[Paste the code to refactor here]
```
REFACTORING GOAL
Primary goal: Architecture Cleanup.
Transformation priorities for this goal:
1. Clarify module boundaries: each module exposes a purpose, not its internals.
2. Fix dependency direction: high-level policy should not depend on low-level detail, and cycles must be broken.
3. Relocate misplaced responsibilities to the module that owns the concept.
4. Reduce coupling at the seams: narrow interfaces and explicit contracts between modules.
RISK PROFILE
Risk level: Aggressive.
- Larger restructuring is allowed: reorganize units, modernize patterns, and restructure flow where it serves the goal.
- Aggressive applies to the SIZE of the change, never to its safety: no behavioral assumptions, no feature invention, no guessed requirements.
- Every restructuring must still trace back to the stated goal — ambition is not a license to rewrite unrelated code.
- Sequence large changes into verifiable stages; an aggressive refactor that cannot be verified in steps is a rewrite, not a refactor.
SAFETY RULES
These rules apply to every transformation, at every risk level:
1. Identify behavior assumptions before changing code — list every assumption you rely on.
2. Flag uncertain behavior instead of deciding it: if you cannot tell what a branch does or why it exists, ask — do not guess.
3. Do not remove functionality. Code that looks redundant may be load-bearing.
4. Do not invent requirements. Refactor toward the stated goal, not toward an imagined better product.
5. Do not rewrite unrelated code. Touch only what the goal requires.
6. Explain why each change exists — every transformation traces to the stated goal or to a named problem in the code.
7. Preserve public contracts — signatures, return types, error types, serialized shapes — unless explicitly instructed otherwise.
TRANSFORMATION GUIDANCE
Known failure modes of this goal — watch for:
- This is cleanup within the existing architecture — do not invent a new architecture, introduce new layers, or redesign the system.
- Moving code across boundaries changes visibility, lifetimes, and initialization order — verify each move individually, not just the end state.
BEHAVIOR PRESERVATION REQUIREMENTS
- Preserve observable behavior: the same inputs produce the same outputs, including error cases.
- Preserve business rules: every condition, threshold, and special case survives the refactor exactly.
- Preserve outputs: formats, ordering, precision, and encodings stay identical unless the goal explicitly targets them.
- Preserve side effects: writes, emitted events, log lines other systems consume — and their relative order.
- Preserve integrations: API shapes, serialized payloads, database access patterns, and external call sequences.
- These requirements hold unless the instructions explicitly say otherwise — and any knowingly behavior-affecting change must be flagged, never silent.
- If achieving the goal and preserving behavior conflict, behavior wins: stop and explain the conflict instead of compromising it.
VALIDATION STRATEGY
Goal-specific validation: validate at the integration level — a module move preserves behavior only if every consumer still gets the same contract.
- Provide a before/after verification plan: the specific inputs to run against both versions and the outputs that must match.
- Provide a behavior comparison: for each changed unit, the observable behaviors it had before and the evidence each is intact after.
- Provide regression validation: the existing tests that must pass, and the missing tests that should exist before this refactor ships.
- Provide integration verification: every external touchpoint — API consumers, database, events, files — and how to confirm each still sees identical behavior.
ASSUMPTIONS
- List every assumption made about the code's behavior, inputs, or environment.
- Mark each assumption VERIFIED (with its evidence) or UNVERIFIED (with the question that would resolve it).
- Any transformation that depends on an UNVERIFIED assumption must be flagged as conditional on it.
NON-GOALS
- Do not invent requirements.
- Do not redesign the entire system.
- Do not remove behavior without justification.
- Do not introduce new features.
- Separate assumptions clearly from facts.
- Flag uncertainty instead of resolving it silently.
- Explain the tradeoffs of any change that has them.
OUTPUT REQUIREMENTS
- Return the refactored code, complete — no elided sections, no "rest unchanged" placeholders inside changed units.
- Follow it with a change list: for each change — what changed, why it serves the goal, and its behavior impact (expected: none).
- Flag any change that could plausibly alter behavior, with the reason it might and the check that would confirm it does not.
- Where a worthwhile transformation was skipped for safety, list it under "Suggested but not applied" with what information would unlock it.