codebase-overview

A skill that documents a project’s folder structure, data flow, component responsibilities, and important integration points. It saves the result in a reusable codebase overview for future work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to map the path from the application entry point through routing and screens to APIs, stores, or databases, while recording performance-sensitive integrations and the owners of transactions, errors, and access control.
Why use it?
Agents otherwise have to rediscover how the project is organized in every session, which can lead to misplaced files and inconsistent decisions. The overview records the architecture and checks it with an architecture audit.

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/mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit/codebase-overview
Any agent
npx skills add mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit --skill codebase-overview
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 41 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 505 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 $0.00041 $0.00505
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00253
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00101
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00051

Measured 2d ago against content hash 46b1b9651f9e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

codebase-overview 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/codebase-overview/SKILL.md · 33 lines

What it actually says

codebase-overview

  1. Reuse BOOT SEQUENCE signals from this session if already known; otherwise glob top-level dirs + manifest.
  2. Map each top-level source directory to a one-line purpose (skip node_modules/dist/build/.git/.next).
  3. Trace primary data flow: entry point → routing → key components/screens → data layer (API/store/DB).
  4. Flag performance-sensitive integration points by file:line — third-party script loading, router/navigation setup, large media/asset loading, analytics init.
  5. Write/update PROJECT/.claude/codebase-overview.md with the findings — the reusable reference other tasks read instead of re-discovering. Record the architecture explicitly (pattern, boundaries, dependency direction, which layer owns transactions/errors/authz): detected-but-unrecorded is re-detected differently next session.
  6. Run /arch-check once the map exists — it measures the tree against the architecture just recorded; a mixed pattern or an inverted dependency belongs in the overview as a known state, not as a surprise for the next feature.
  7. If root CLAUDE.md lacks an architecture section, add ≤10 lines pointing to it (essentials inline, detail lazy-loaded from codebase-overview.md) — never let CLAUDE.md itself balloon past its existing budget.
  8. Never modify source files — documentation only.

Output

CODEBASE OVERVIEW: [project name] — written to PROJECT/.claude/codebase-overview.md
DIRECTORIES: [dir → one-line purpose]
DATA FLOW: [entry → routing → components → data layer]
KEY COMPONENTS: [component → responsibility — only non-obvious ones]
PERF-SENSITIVE: [file:line — why it matters]
CLAUDE.md: [updated | already covered | needs manual review — reason]
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 · 33 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A 46b1b9651f9e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

codebase-overview is a skill published in the GitHub repository mtvrkan/senior-dev-kit (5 stars, last pushed 12d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 505 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 2026-08-31.

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