commit-archaeologist

A local Git-history guide that traces where a piece of code came from, how it changed, and what may have motivated it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explain a function or file, investigate surprising code, or gather context before a rewrite or refactor.
Why use it?
It provides context that a simple blame command cannot, which helps avoid removing workarounds or design choices without understanding them.

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/shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps/commit-archaeologist
Any agent
npx skills add Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps --skill commit-archaeologist
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps

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 1,225 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 $0.01225
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00613
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00245
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00122

Measured yesterday against content hash 8f21eb5ff270, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

commit-archaeologist 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 1 executable file (scripts/archaeologist.py), 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.

agent_skills/commit-archaeologist/SKILL.md · 133 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 133 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Commit Archaeologist

git blame names the last person to touch a line. This skill reconstructs the reason the line exists. It traces a file or current line range through local git history, identifies its origin and later edits, finds files that repeatedly changed beside it, and extracts intent clues from commit messages.

Everything runs locally. No network calls, API keys, or repository writes.

When to use

  • The user asks why a block, function, or file exists
  • The user wants to know who introduced code and what changed afterward
  • A rewrite or refactor needs historical constraints and change risks
  • A workaround, temporary branch, or surprising design choice needs context

When not to use

  • The user only wants raw blame output or a commit list
  • The task is to squash, delete, or rewrite git history
  • The repository is remote and has not been cloned locally
  • The question is about project-wide architecture rather than one file or region

Gather the target

Get the repository path and tracked file path. Use a line range when the user names a current block or function. If either path is missing, ask only for the missing value. Do not scan sibling repositories.

Paths should be relative to the repository and use forward slashes. Line ranges use inclusive current line numbers such as 40-72.

Run the dig

From this skill directory:

python3 scripts/archaeologist.py /path/to/repo src/cache.py --lines 40-72 --json

For the complete history of a file, omit --lines:

python3 scripts/archaeologist.py /path/to/repo src/cache.py --json

The script is read-only. With a range it uses git line-log; without one it uses file history with rename following. It also reads current authorship with blame. If it rejects a path or range, report that error and ask for a corrected target.

Before interpreting the JSON, read references/reading-git-history.md. Its confidence rules prevent blame ownership, correlation, and commit-message hints from becoming false certainty.

Read the full file on GitHub · 133 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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 · 133 lines · 82 tokens per session scan A 8f21eb5ff270

Subscribe to this mod's changes

commit-archaeologist is a skill published in the GitHub repository Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps (135,274 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 82 tokens to every session and 1,225 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 2026-08-30.

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