Introduction
You have working code that you dread touching. Variable names make no sense. The same logic appears in three places. It's slow on large inputs, and adding a new feature feels fragile.
Refactoring fixes that — and Claude Code makes it faster. This guide covers how to clean up, restructure, and optimize code without breaking what already works: spotting design patterns in spaghetti logic, improving performance, balancing simplicity against efficiency, and applying all of it to a real-world web scraper.
Principles of Clean Refactoring
Refactoring improves existing code without changing its external behavior. Not rewriting from scratch — making the code cleaner, more readable, and easier to maintain while keeping exactly what it does.
