zoom-out

zoom-out is a skill for Claude Code from tslateman/duet. It costs 68 tokens per session (607 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A skill for stepping back from unfamiliar code and mapping its place in a larger system. It identifies the unit being examined, its callers, neighboring modules, higher-level role, and dependencies.

In plain words
What is it for?
Explaining an unfamiliar file, module, package, or service; finding what uses it; identifying related code; and describing its role in a pipeline or system.
Why use it?
It helps developers understand how code fits together before changing it, reducing the risk of getting lost in line-by-line details.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the duet plugin — 25 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Explaining an unfamiliar file, module, package, or service; finding what uses it; identifying related code; and describing its role in a pipeline or system.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tslateman/duet/zoom-out
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.

Any agent
npx skills add tslateman/duet --skill zoom-out
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tslateman/duet

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install duet, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 25 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent.

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 zoom-out

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tslateman/duet/zoom-out/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tslateman/duet/zoom-out)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tslateman/duet/zoom-out"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tslateman/duet/zoom-out/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for zoom-out

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tslateman/duet/zoom-out"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tslateman/duet/zoom-out.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 68 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 607 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00068 $0.00607
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00303
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00121
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00061

Measured 8d ago against content hash a5d036847329, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

zoom-out 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 8d 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/zoom-out/SKILL.md · 56 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 56 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Zoom Out

Overview

When you don't know a section of code well, the failure mode is to read line-by-line and never see the shape. Zoom out forces a higher layer of abstraction first: callers, neighbors, role in the system. Read the map before walking the streets.

The Map First

Before explaining what a piece of code does, produce a map of its surroundings:

  1. Identify the unit: file, module, package, or service. Name it precisely.
  2. Find callers: who uses this? Grep for imports, invocations, or routes.
  3. Find neighbors: what siblings live in the same directory or namespace, and what do they do?
  4. Find the abstraction above: what does this module belong to? A pipeline, a layer, a bounded context.
  5. Find the abstraction below: what does it depend on?

Render the result as a short list or small diagram. Use the project's own vocabulary: the words the codebase uses, not generic CS terms.

Output Shape

Aim for something like:

Module:    src/billing/invoicing/
Role:      Generates invoices from billing periods (one of three writers under /billing)
Above:     /billing — orchestrates subscriptions, invoicing, dunning
Below:     /billing/pricing (rates), /billing/tax (tax calc)
Callers:   src/jobs/monthly_invoice_job.py, src/api/admin/invoices.py
Siblings:  subscriptions/, dunning/

Then, and only then, go deeper.

Anti-Patterns

  • Reading line-by-line first. A bottom-up model rarely survives contact with the actual architecture.
  • Generic vocabulary. "Service layer, repository pattern" tells the reader nothing about this codebase. Use its own terms.
  • Skipping callers. Behavior at the callsite often constrains the module more than the module's own code does.
  • Zooming in too soon. If the map isn't done, every implementation detail you read is uncalibrated.

Pairs With

  • /naming: domain vocabulary lives in names; zoom-out is naming applied to architecture
  • /design: zoom-out surfaces the structure, design evaluates it
  • /ia: IA is zoom-out for documentation; same instinct, different medium
  • /research: zoom-out maps the inside, research maps the outside

Read the full file on GitHub · 56 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. 8d ago First seen · 56 lines · 68 tokens per session scan A a5d036847329

Subscribe to this mod's changes

zoom-out is a skill published in the GitHub repository tslateman/duet (1 stars, last pushed 12d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 68 tokens to every session and 607 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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