exploring-codebases SKILL.md skillA
exploring-codebases from oaustegard/claude-skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add oaustegard/claude-skills/exploring-codebases@v2.6.0Pins v2.6.0 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- oaustegard/claude-skills
- Path
plugins/code-intelligence/skills/exploring-codebases/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 7
- Latest version
- v2.6.0, committed Oct 7, 2026
- First version recorded
- Jul 7, 2026
- Size
- 9,325 bytes
- Repository stars
- 158
- License
- MIT
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…
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Exploring Codebases Exploratory code analysis for unfamiliar repositories. Orchestrates tree-sitting (structural) and featuring (semantic) over a local copy. ## Workflow Five numbered steps, in order. Do not skip step 0. ### 0. Setup (once per session) ```bash uv venv /home/claude/.venv 2>/dev/null uv pip install tree-sitter --python /home/claude/.venv/bin/python export PYTHON=/home/claude/.venv/bin/python export TREESIT=/mnt/skills/user/tree-sitting/scripts/treesit.py export GATHER=/mnt/skills/user/featuring/scripts/gather.py ``` If step 2's `--stats` reports `Symbols: 0` on a repo you know contains code, the `tree-sitter` core package isn't installed — come back here and install it (the engine bundles its own grammars and does NOT use tree-sitter-language-pack). Treesit exits 0 and prints no error in that case, so zero symbols is the only signal you get. There is no `Errors:` line: that one appears for parse failures, and an absent parser never reaches parsing. The full signal is in the tree-sitting skill's Setup section. ### 1. Get the repo (tarball, not per-file) ```bash OWNER=... REPO=... REF=main # branch name, tag, or SHA. For a PR: pull/N/head …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add oaustegard/claude-skills/exploring-codebases@sha256:fd88e7a6d74a5f5fThe line at the top of this page pins the label v2.6.0, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_qlmo3reoou6zyryl)
4 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 7 versions of this file, between Jul 7, 2026 and Oct 7, 2026, about one every 15 days.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| v2.6.0 latest | 2026-10-07 | 87f7fec | 9,325 B | A | view · diff |
| v2.5.2 | 2026-09-09 | 5e58100 | 9,325 B | A | view · diff |
| v2.5.1 | 2026-08-25 | 59ad255 | 9,436 B | A | view · diff |
| v2.5.0 | 2026-08-25 | 955c1d2 | 9,433 B | A | view · diff |
| v2.4.0 | 2026-08-22 | a8e6362 | 9,381 B | A | view · diff |
| v2.4.0 | 2026-07-16 | 4d115ac | 8,381 B | A | view · diff |
| v2.3.1 | 2026-07-07 | 6154d36 | 6,391 B | A | view |
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (9325 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
oaustegard/claude-skills · 158 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-11-07 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_qlmo3reoou6zyryl GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=oaustegard/claude-skills/exploring-codebases GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/fd88e7a6d74a5f5f9b26013605470784b307c9da614560a38dcbd22a637b751f
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.
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