Conservative configuration management

Be selective and intentional with configuration choices to avoid bloat and unnecessary complexity. This applies to build configurations, development environment settings, and dependency management.

Key practices:

• Exclude unnecessary directories and files from build processes to improve performance
• Make optional development features configurable rather than enabled by default
• Avoid introducing new dependencies unless existing solutions cannot fulfill requirements
• Document optional configurations clearly so developers can enable them when needed

Example from TypeScript configuration:

"exclude": [
  "**/node_modules/**",
  "**/.next/**"
]

This approach reduces build times, keeps development environments lean, and minimizes maintenance overhead while ensuring configurations remain focused on actual project needs.