explore

A read-only method for investigating an unfamiliar codebase. It searches files, definitions, imports, and callers to explain where code is and how it fits together.

In plain words
What is it for?
Finding symbols and files, answering how a feature works, tracing code relationships, and getting a broader view of an unfamiliar project.
Why use it?
It helps you understand existing code without changing it, especially when you do not yet know the project's structure or where a feature is implemented.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/darkroomengineering/cc-settings/explore
Any agent
npx skills add darkroomengineering/cc-settings --skill explore
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/darkroomengineering/cc-settings

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 64 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 896 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00064 $0.00896
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00448
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00179
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00090

Measured yesterday against content hash be400fd709d1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explore scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/explore/SKILL.md · 87 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 87 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Codebase Exploration

Delegates to the Explore agent for fast, read-only investigation of the codebase.

Standalone Codex

Claude frontmatter does not enforce a fork or tool restriction in standalone Codex. Keep this workflow read-only yourself, or use spawn_agent with an explore agent and a read-only prompt. Gather current state by explicitly running pwd, basename "$PWD", ls package.json Cargo.toml go.mod pyproject.toml, and git rev-parse --show-toplevel; the !command lines below are Claude interpolation only.

Codex does not receive TLDR from this package. In broad mode use rg --files, rg -n exact searches, direct import searches, and focused file reads. In upward-zoom mode search the symbol definition and all call sites with rg -n, then trace imports and callers one layer up. Never claim a TLDR MCP ran.

Claude current state

  • Directory: !pwd 2>/dev/null
  • Project: !basename "$(pwd)" 2>/dev/null
  • Stack: !ls package.json Cargo.toml go.mod pyproject.toml 2>/dev/null || echo "unknown"
  • Git root: !git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null || echo "not a git repo"

Two modes — pick by what the user asked

Broad investigation mode (default)

Use when the user is asking "how does X work" / "where is X" / "what handles Y" — finding code without a known starting point.

  1. Start broad - In Claude use tldr semantic or Glob; in standalone Codex use the native searches above
  2. Narrow down - Read specific files to understand implementation
  3. Trace connections - In Claude use tldr impact; in standalone Codex trace callers and imports with rg
  4. Summarize findings - Return clear, actionable summary

Upward-zoom mode

Use when the user is staring at a known function or module and needs to know how it fits — triggers like "zoom out", "bigger picture", "where does this fit", onboarding unfamiliar code.

  1. Follow ../context-doc/DOMAIN-AWARENESS.md — read CONTEXT.md and any relevant ADRs first if they exist.
  2. Identify the symbol or file the user is asking about.
  3. In Claude, use TLDR for the structural answer:

Read the full file on GitHub · 87 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 87 lines · 64 tokens per session scan A be400fd709d1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explore is a skill published in the GitHub repository darkroomengineering/cc-settings (42 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 64 tokens to every session and 896 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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