c4-codebase-architecture

c4-codebase-architecture is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from lmammino/c4-codebase-architecture-skill. It costs 47 tokens per session (3,046 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A skill for inspecting an existing repository and documenting its architecture using C4 views, which describe systems, containers, and components at different levels of detail.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to reverse-engineer a codebase, create architecture documentation, onboard engineers, compare intended and actual design, or clarify system context and components.
Why use it?
It turns code and infrastructure into an architecture overview when the system boundaries, responsibilities, or runtime structure are unclear.

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/lmammino/c4-codebase-architecture-skill/c4-codebase-architecture
Any agent
npx skills add lmammino/c4-codebase-architecture-skill --skill c4-codebase-architecture
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lmammino/c4-codebase-architecture-skill

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for c4-codebase-architecture

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lmammino/c4-codebase-architecture-skill/c4-codebase-architecture.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/lmammino/c4-codebase-architecture-skill/c4-codebase-architecture)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lmammino/c4-codebase-architecture-skill/c4-codebase-architecture"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lmammino/c4-codebase-architecture-skill/c4-codebase-architecture.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 47 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,046 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 $0.00047 $0.03046
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.01523
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00609
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00305

Measured 5d ago against content hash 69c37c26f2e5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

c4-codebase-architecture 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 5d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/c4-codebase-architecture/SKILL.md · 539 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 539 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

C4 Model Codebase Documentation Skill

Purpose

This skill helps an agent inspect a codebase and produce useful C4-style architecture documentation. It should combine evidence from the repository with targeted follow-up questions whenever code inspection alone is not enough to determine system boundaries, responsibilities, runtime topology, or business intent.

The skill should be pragmatic rather than dogmatic. The goal is not to force every repository into a perfect set of four diagrams, but to produce the clearest possible architecture view at the right level of detail.


When to use this skill

Use this skill when the user wants to:

  • understand the architecture of an existing codebase
  • produce C4 documentation for a repository
  • generate a system context, container, or component view
  • onboard new engineers with architecture docs
  • reverse engineer system structure from code and infrastructure definitions
  • compare intended architecture with implemented architecture

This skill works best when the repository includes at least some of the following:

  • source code
  • infrastructure as code
  • deployment descriptors
  • README or docs
  • API specifications
  • CI/CD configuration
  • test suites

What this skill should produce

The skill should aim to produce some or all of the following, depending on what the codebase supports:

  1. System Context

    • the system under study
    • human users or personas
    • external systems, APIs, providers, or dependencies
    • key relationships
  2. Container view

    • main deployable or runnable units
    • databases, queues, frontends, APIs, workers, serverless functions, data stores
    • protocols and interactions between them
  3. Component view

    • major internal components within a selected container
    • their responsibilities and relationships
  4. Supporting narrative

    • assumptions made from code inspection
    • unresolved ambiguities
    • questions for the user
    • notable architectural risks or mismatches

Read the full file on GitHub · 539 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. 5d ago First seen · 539 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A 69c37c26f2e5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

c4-codebase-architecture is a skill published in the GitHub repository lmammino/c4-codebase-architecture-skill (17 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 3,046 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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