exploring-codebases

A code-search tool that finds relevant code and returns the complete function or class containing each match. It uses fast text search plus knowledge of code structure.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find existing implementations, examples, functions, classes, and references in a codebase.
Why use it?
It avoids piecing together implementations from scattered matching lines and can show only declarations first to reduce unnecessary output.

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/tmcfarlane/oh-my-cursor/exploring-codebases
Any agent
npx skills add tmcfarlane/oh-my-cursor --skill exploring-codebases
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tmcfarlane/oh-my-cursor

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 71 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,023 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 $0.00071 $0.01023
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00511
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00205
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00102

Measured 2d ago against content hash ec7166f498c7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

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 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/exploring-codebases/SKILL.md · 104 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 104 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Exploring Codebases

Hybrid search tool that combines the speed of ripgrep with structural awareness from tree-sitter or pre-generated _MAP.md files. It finds matches and returns the entire function or class containing the match, de-duplicating results semantically.

Progressive Disclosure

By default, returns signatures only (docstrings + declarations without function bodies), reducing token usage by 10-20x. Use --expand-full to get complete implementations when needed.

Installation

uv venv /home/claude/.venv
# tree-sitter is optional if using --use-maps mode
uv pip install tree-sitter-language-pack --python /home/claude/.venv/bin/python

Usage

# Default: signatures only with tree-sitter (efficient)
/home/claude/.venv/bin/python /mnt/skills/user/exploring-codebases/scripts/search.py "query" /path/to/repo

# Full implementations
/home/claude/.venv/bin/python /mnt/skills/user/exploring-codebases/scripts/search.py "query" /path/to/repo --expand-full

# Map-based mode: no tree-sitter required (#276)
# Requires _MAP.md files generated by mapping-codebases
/home/claude/.venv/bin/python /mnt/skills/user/exploring-codebases/scripts/search.py "query" /path/to/repo --use-maps

Options

  • --glob pattern: Filter files (e.g., *.py, *.ts)
  • --expand-full: Return full implementations instead of signatures
  • --json: Output JSON for machine processing (default is Markdown)
  • --use-maps: Use pre-generated _MAP.md files instead of tree-sitter for context expansion. Eliminates redundant tree-sitter parsing when maps already exist.

Map-Based Mode (v0.3.0)

When _MAP.md files exist (generated by mapping-codebases), use --use-maps to skip tree-sitter entirely:

  1. mapping-codebases runs tree-sitter once to generate _MAP.md files with symbol locations
  2. exploring-codebases --use-maps uses ripgrep + map data for context expansion
  3. No redundant AST parsing at search time

Benefits:

  • Single tree-sitter execution per codebase (during map generation)
  • Faster searches (no AST parsing overhead)
  • tree-sitter-language-pack not required at runtime
  • Maps serve as canonical index for both navigation and search

Read the full file on GitHub · 104 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. 2d ago First seen · 104 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A ec7166f498c7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

exploring-codebases is a skill published in the GitHub repository tmcfarlane/oh-my-cursor (108 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 1,023 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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