codebase-documenter

A documentation tool that creates a codebase guide for new developers, including the architecture, major components, data flow, setup steps, and a suggested reading path.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explain how a repository works, document its structure, extract real setup commands, and help new team members become productive.
Why use it?
It turns the code itself into an onboarding guide when existing README or wiki information may be outdated.

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/opencue/cuecards/codebase-documenter
Any agent
npx skills add opencue/cuecards --skill codebase-documenter
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/opencue/cuecards

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 123 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,393 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 $0.00123 $0.03393
Opus 5 $0.00062 $0.01697
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00679
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00339

Measured yesterday against content hash e196589ad413, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

codebase-documenter 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (scripts/detect_staleness.sh, scripts/extract_project_facts.sh, scripts/validate_output.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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/codebase-documenter/SKILL.md · 321 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 321 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Codebase Documenter

Generate developer-facing documentation that helps new team members become productive quickly. Produces a single docs/CODEBASE.md with architecture diagrams, component descriptions, data flow, setup instructions, and an onboarding reading path.

The Inclusion Test

Before writing any line, ask: "Would a new developer need to know this to become productive?"

  • If yes → include it
  • If no → cut it

Dense, specific content beats comprehensive coverage. Every section should earn its place.

Source of Truth: Code First

The codebase is the primary source of truth — not the README, not the wiki, not inline comments. Repository documentation (README.md, ARCHITECTURE.md, CONTRIBUTING.md) is frequently outdated: it describes what the project was, not what it is.

When exploring, always prioritize reading actual code over reading documentation:

  • Derive architecture from imports, entry points, and module structure — not from what the README claims the architecture is
  • Extract commands from Makefile, package.json scripts, CI config — not from README setup instructions that may be stale
  • Identify patterns from how the code actually works — not from design docs that may describe aspirational patterns never implemented
  • Get version numbers from dependency files — not from docs that forget to update them

When documentation and code disagree, trust the code. Note the discrepancy if relevant ("README says X, but the code actually does Y") but document reality.

Documentation is still useful for context that code can't express: the why behind decisions, domain terminology, and business rules. Read it — but verify against code before including any claim in the output.

Constraints

  • Only describe what can be inferred from actual code, config, and git history
  • Never invent undocumented behavior or hypothetical scenarios
  • All file paths must point to files that exist
  • All version numbers must come from dependency files, not from memory
  • All commands must be real — extracted from Makefile, package.json, CI config — verified to actually exist, not copied from README without checking
  • Complement existing docs (README.md, AGENTS.md), don't duplicate them

Read the full file on GitHub · 321 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 321 lines · 123 tokens per session scan A e196589ad413

Subscribe to this mod's changes

codebase-documenter is a skill published in the GitHub repository opencue/cuecards (5 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 123 tokens to every session and 3,393 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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