exploring-codebases
From the author
First-encounter orientation on a repository nobody here has worked in yet. Runs a fixed five-step workflow — venv setup, tarball fetch, tree-sitting structural scan, featuring synthesis, then reasoning over the two — and yields an account of what the repo contains and how it is arranged, optionally written out as _FEATURES.md. Use for "I just cloned this", "what is this repo", "what does this do", "explore this repo", "give me an orientation", "what are the main features", "review what's new in this repo", or before starting work in a codebase you have not seen. This is the divergent what's-here skill. Route elsewhere for: a named symbol, a file's structure or a line range (tree-sitting); all callers of a Python symbol (searching-codebases); teaching a human the codebase through exercises (orienting-codebases); fetching or cloning a repo without analysing it (accessing-github-repos, cloning-project).
Install
npx skills add oaustegard/claude-skills --skill exploring-codebases -a claude-code
Installs to .claude/skills/exploring-codebases/ · Each command fetches the skill straight from GitHub with the open skills CLI.
Byte-identical to the scanned commit, with the repository’s licence and a SOURCE.txt.
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Why 84
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Similar skills
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- orienting-codebasesoaustegard/claude-skillsInteractive codebase orientation for a HUMAN who wants to learn the code. Runs the same tree-sitting + featuring pipeline as exploring-codebases but synthesizes it into guided exercises and an HTML teaching artifact rather than an analysis document. Use for "orient me to this repo", "teach me this codebase", "walk me through this code", "learning orientation", or when someone wants genuine comprehension rather than a task completed. The audience is the test: if nobody is being taught and the goal is to get work done, use exploring-codebases instead.Testing★ 154
- featuringoaustegard/claude-skillsGenerate hierarchical _FEATURES.md files that describe what a codebase DOES from a user/consumer perspective, anchored to source symbols via tree-sitting. Supports large complex codebases through feature-driven decomposition into sub-feature files. Uses a multi-pass synthesis: orientation → detail → overview rewrite. Use when someone says "what does this do", "document features", "feature inventory", "_FEATURES.md", or needs to understand a codebase's purpose before modifying it. Complements tree-sitting (structural) with semantic (why/what-for) layer.Other★ 154
- oss-explore-repochiruu12/OSS-SkillsGuided codebase exploration for understanding a repo's architecture, patterns, and domain language before contributing. Not issue-specific. builds general understanding. Use when exploring a new repo, wanting to understand how a project works, or preparing to become a regular contributor. Not for learning a framework or language you have never used. Use oss-learn-stack for that.Planning★ 61
- codebase-onboardingalirezarezvani/claude-skillsAnalyze a codebase and generate onboarding documentation for engineers, tech leads, and contractors. Fast fact-gathering and repeatable onboarding outputs. Use when onboarding a new engineer, writing architecture-overview docs for a new project, or producing tech-lead briefings for unfamiliar repos.Writing★ 28.7K
- assessing-impactoaustegard/claude-skillsPre-change blast-radius report for a symbol or file. Walks tree-sitting references, augments with a plain-text scan over non-parsed files (configs, plain docs), and clusters affected sites by feature (`_FEATURES.md`) or top-level package. Use when about to refactor, rename, or delete something in a repo you don't own — "what breaks if I change `validateUser`", "who calls this", "is this safe to remove", "where is this used", "blast radius", "impact analysis". This is the CONVERGENT pre-change risk skill — for "what is this repo?" use exploring-codebases; for "where is X?" use searching-codebases.Engineering★ 154
- survey-patternstobihagemann/turboSurvey the codebase for analogous features, reusable utilities, and existing patterns relevant to a proposed change, reading any source the task names outside this repo. Returns structured findings without writing code. Use when the user asks to "survey patterns", "find existing patterns", "look for analogous features", "check how similar things are done", "find prior art for this change", or needs pattern context before planning a change.Writing★ 416
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