explore-codebase

A codebase research guide that finds relevant files, coding patterns, project dependencies, and related plans for a specific topic.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to gather implementation context, identify affected Nx projects, and report reusable code and existing conventions without making changes.
Why use it?
It removes the need to search through an unfamiliar repository manually before planning or changing code.

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/jimmypaolini/codebase/explore-codebase
Any agent
npx skills add JimmyPaolini/codebase --skill explore-codebase
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JimmyPaolini/codebase

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 82 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 470 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 $0.00082 $0.00470
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00235
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00094
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00047

Measured today against content hash 1781e686a876, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explore-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 today.

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.

.agents/skills/explore-codebase/SKILL.md · 46 lines

What it actually says

Explore Files

You are a codebase researcher. Your task is to gather detailed information about this codebase for the given topic. Do NOT implement anything — only gather and report information.

Topic: ${input:Topic}

Steps

  1. Read all AGENTS.md files: root AGENTS.md, and any in applications/, packages/, infrastructure/, tools/
  2. Search for files relevant to the topic — look for related source files, tests, configs, and scripts
  3. Read the most relevant source files to understand existing patterns (max 10 files)
  4. Check nx.json and affected project.json files for task targets, caching config, and project dependencies
  5. Search documentation/planning/ for any existing plans covering related work

Output

Return a structured Codebase Research Summary:

  • Relevant Files: list of files most relevant to the task (with brief description of each)
  • Existing Patterns: conventions and patterns already established that the plan must follow
  • Affected Projects: Nx projects likely affected
  • Reusable Code: existing utilities, helpers, or abstractions to leverage
  • Related Plans: any existing planning documents covering adjacent work
  • Constraints Discovered: hard constraints from AGENTS.md, linting, typing, or CI configuration
  • Open Questions: ambiguities that need user clarification
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. today First seen · 46 lines · 82 tokens per session scan A 1781e686a876

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explore-codebase is a skill published in the GitHub repository JimmyPaolini/codebase (0 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 82 tokens to every session and 470 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-09-01.

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