understand-onboard git:20260708.0bae36eA

Immutable. This exact content is served forever at /api/v1/blob/c36a321beeacec97.

---
name: understand-onboard
description: Use when you need to generate an onboarding guide for new team members joining a project
---

# /understand-onboard

Generate a comprehensive onboarding guide from the project's knowledge graph.

## Graph Structure Reference

The knowledge graph JSON has this structure:
- `project` — {name, description, languages, frameworks, analyzedAt, gitCommitHash}
- `nodes[]` — each has {id, type, name, filePath?, summary, tags[], complexity, languageNotes?}
  - Code node types: file, function, class, module, concept
  - Non-code node types: config, document, service, table, endpoint, pipeline, schema, resource
  - Domain/knowledge node types: domain, flow, step, article, entity, topic, claim, source
  - IDs use the node type as prefix, e.g. `file:path`, `function:path:name`, `config:path`, `article:path`
- `edges[]` — each has {source, target, type, direction, weight}
  - Key types: imports, contains, calls, depends_on, configures, documents, deploys, triggers, contains_flow, flow_step, related, cites
- `layers[]` — each has {id, name, description, nodeIds[]}
- `tour[]` — each has {order, title, description, nodeIds[]}

## How to Read Efficiently

1. Use Grep to search within the JSON for relevant entries BEFORE reading the full file
2. Only read sections you need — don't dump the entire graph into context
3. Node names and summaries are the most useful fields for understanding
4. Edges tell you how components connect — follow imports and calls for dependency chains

## Instructions

1. Check that `.understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json` exists. If not, tell the user to run `/understand` first.

2. **Check graph freshness** — read `project.gitCommitHash` from the graph metadata and run `git rev-parse HEAD` in the project root. If both values exist and differ, warn the user before generating the guide that the knowledge graph may be stale and newer code may be missing from onboarding content. Suggest: Run `/understand` to refresh the graph. If git metadata is missing or unavailable, continue with a brief best-effort warning instead of blocking.

3. **Read project metadata** — use Grep or Read with a line limit to extract the `"project"` section (name, description, languages, frameworks).

4. **Read layers** — Grep for `"layers"` to get the full layers array. These define the architecture and will structure the guide.

5. **Read the tour** — Grep for `"tour"` to get the guided walkthrough steps. These provide the recommended learning path.

6. **Read file-level structural nodes only** — use Grep to find nodes with file-level types (`file`, `config`, `document`, `service`, `pipeline`, `table`, `schema`, `resource`, `endpoint`) in the knowledge graph. Skip function-level and class-level nodes to keep the guide high-level. Extract each node's `name`, `filePath`, `summary`, and `complexity`.

7. **Identify complexity hotspots** — from the file-level nodes, find those with the highest `complexity` values. These are areas new developers should approach carefully.

8. **Generate the onboarding guide** with these sections:
   - **Project Overview**: name, languages, frameworks, description (from project metadata)
   - **Architecture Layers**: each layer's name, description, and key files (from layers + file nodes)
   - **Key Concepts**: important patterns and design decisions (from node summaries and tags)
   - **Guided Tour**: step-by-step walkthrough (from the tour section)
   - **File Map**: what each key file does (from file-level nodes, organized by layer)
   - **Complexity Hotspots**: areas to approach carefully (from complexity values)

9. Format as clean markdown
10. Offer to save the guide to `docs/ONBOARDING.md` in the project
11. Suggest the user commit it to the repo for the team