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codebase-onboarding

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Use when you land in an unfamiliar or inherited codebase and must get productive fast: a breadth-first map of entry points, request flow, module ownership, hidden side effects (cron, webhooks, workers) and churn hotspots, committed as CODEBASE-MAP.md. NOT a deep audit of one module (that is `analyze`) or chasing one failure (that is `debug`).

skills/codebase-onboarding/SKILL.md

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Nov 4, 2026
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# Codebase onboarding — get oriented fast, leave a map

You have just landed in a codebase you did not write: a fresh clone, an inherited project, an acquired repo, an abandoned side project someone handed you. The instinct is to start reading files top-to-bottom. Resist it. That is how a week disappears and you still cannot answer "where does X happen". This skill runs a disciplined **breadth-first reconnaissance pass** and produces one durable artifact: a map a teammate can trust and you can re-read tomorrow.

The payoff is measured. Engineers using AI to onboard reach the same milestones roughly **2x faster** — productive in 1–2 weeks instead of 4–6 — and the biggest gains are exactly in *searching for code, decoding undocumented patterns, and tracing data flows* (super-productivity.com, accessed 2026-06-02). That is what the recon pass below targets, in order.

## Lead with the deliverable

Before you grep a single line, know the target: a single living file, `CODEBASE-MAP.md`, committed at the repo root. You work *backward* from its sections — every recon step fills one. Minimal schema:

```markdown
# CODEBASE-MAP.md — <repo name>

## Stack          # languages, framework + versions, package manager, run scripts
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