trace-codebase

A repository-mapping skill for understanding an unfamiliar codebase, service, feature, or path through the system.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when onboarding to a project, explaining how a subsystem works, mapping architecture before a change, or finding where a behavior is implemented.
Why use it?
It reduces the time spent searching by identifying the relevant files, entry points, boundaries, callers, and tests.

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/ezraapple/skills-init/trace-codebase
Any agent
npx skills add EzraApple/skills-init --skill trace-codebase
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/EzraApple/skills-init

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 51 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 790 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 $0.00051 $0.00790
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00395
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00158
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00079

Measured 2d ago against content hash 75b33dd786bf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

trace-codebase 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 2d ago.

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/trace-codebase/SKILL.md · 125 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 125 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Trace Codebase

Produce an evidence-backed map of a subsystem that is smaller than the code explored. Explain the representative flow, ownership boundaries, and change seams without turning the result into an encyclopedia.

Route Nearby Work

  • Use systematic-debugging for an active failure needing a causal diagnosis.
  • Use plan-changes once the task is to choose and sequence modifications.
  • Use review skills for evaluating an existing diff.
  • Answer small factual lookups directly.

Resolve the Scope

Translate the requested area into concrete paths, symbols, routes, commands, or runtime entrypoints.

Start with cheap discovery:

  • repository guidance and package manifests;
  • directory and export structure;
  • named routes, commands, events, schemas, or UI entrypoints;
  • tests and examples that exercise the behavior;
  • direct callers and consumers.

If the area is large, select one representative flow and state what is excluded. Ask for clarification only when different interpretations would produce materially different maps.

Trace a Representative Flow

Follow real code through the relevant stages:

external entry -> validation/auth -> orchestration/domain logic
-> persistence or external side effect -> returned or visible result

Adapt the stages to the system. Capture:

  • where execution starts;
  • the important data shapes and contracts;
  • where decisions and invariants live;
  • state ownership and lifecycle;
  • error and cancellation behavior;
  • persistence, network, queue, filesystem, or process boundaries;
  • configuration, generated code, and feature gates that change behavior;
  • the consumers that constrain safe changes.

Read enough surrounding code to distinguish a real boundary from a helper that only forwards data.

Use History Selectively

Read git history, issue context, or design docs when they can explain:

  • why a surprising boundary exists;
  • whether behavior is a compatibility constraint;
  • where a regression or migration began;
  • which prior approach should be reused or avoided.

Read the full file on GitHub · 125 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. 2d ago First seen · 125 lines · 51 tokens per session scan A 75b33dd786bf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

trace-codebase is a skill published in the GitHub repository EzraApple/skills-init (2 stars, last pushed 29d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 51 tokens to every session and 790 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 2026-08-31.

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