ring:exploring-codebases

A skill for systematically understanding an unfamiliar codebase. It maps the project's architecture, components, layers, and organization before producing guidance with file-and-line evidence.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before planning a complex feature, investigating how a system works, or exploring changes that span multiple components or layers.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of planning changes without understanding how the relevant parts of the code work together.

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/lerianstudio/ring/exploring-codebases
Any agent
npx skills add LerianStudio/ring --skill exploring-codebases
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/LerianStudio/ring

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 91 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,308 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 $0.00091 $0.02308
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.01154
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00462
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00231

Measured yesterday against content hash 76f9e03b64e8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ring:exploring-codebases 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.

default/skills/exploring-codebases/SKILL.md · 248 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 248 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Autonomous Multi-Phase Codebase Exploration

When to use

  • Need to understand how a feature/system works across the codebase
  • Starting work on unfamiliar codebase or component
  • Planning changes that span multiple layers/components
  • User asks "how does X work?" for non-trivial X
  • Need architecture understanding before implementation

Skip when

  • Pure reference lookup (function signature, type definition)
  • Checking if specific file exists (yes/no question)
  • Reading error message from known file location

Sequence

Runs before: ring:writing-plans

Similar: dispatching-parallel-agents

Multi-phase approach: Phase 0 scopes the target, Phase 1 discovers the natural structure of the codebase, Phase 2 deep-dives into each discovered area in parallel, Phase 3 collects results, and Phase 4 synthesizes findings.

Announce at start: "Using ring:exploring-codebases for multi-phase autonomous exploration."

How It Works

Phase 1: Discovery (3-4 parallel agents)
  → Architecture, Components, Layers, Organization

Phase 2: Deep Dive (N adaptive agents, one per discovered perspective)
  → Target implementation in each area

Phase 3: Synthesis → Actionable guidance with file:line evidence

Phase 0: Scope Definition

Extract from user request: core subject, context/intent, depth needed. Set exploration boundaries (include/exclude directories).

Phase 1: Discovery Pass

⛔ STOP-CHECK BEFORE DISPATCH

Before emitting any Task call, count the discovery agents you intend to launch in this turn.

  • Count MUST equal the number of discovery perspectives you scoped (typically 3-4: Architecture, Components, Layers, Organization).
  • If your dispatch count diverges from your scoped count → STOP and reconcile.
  • No substitutions, no omissions.

⛔ MUST NOT trickle-dispatch

All discovery agents leave in the SAME TURN, before reading any agent output.

Forbidden sequences:

  • Dispatch agent 1 → read result → dispatch agent 2
  • Dispatch a subset → wait → dispatch the rest
  • Dispatch follow-up agents conditioned on partial output
  • Loop sequentially over the discovery angles

Read the full file on GitHub · 248 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 · 248 lines · 91 tokens per session scan A 76f9e03b64e8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ring:exploring-codebases is a skill published in the GitHub repository LerianStudio/ring (210 stars, last pushed 12d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 91 tokens to every session and 2,308 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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