kb-init

A project-documentation skill that analyzes a codebase and fills an Obsidian vault with structured notes about it. It checks existing markdown documentation against the current code and marks outdated material.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create architectural notes, references, and project overviews, or to audit existing README, architecture, and changelog files.
Why use it?
It reduces the time needed to understand an unfamiliar codebase and helps prevent old documentation from misleading developers. It can start with an empty or nearly empty vault.

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/waelmas/codeplow/kb-init
Any agent
npx skills add waelmas/codeplow --skill kb-init
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/waelmas/codeplow

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 140 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 8,368 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 $0.00140 $0.08368
Opus 5 $0.00070 $0.04184
Sonnet 5 $0.00028 $0.01674
Haiku 4.5 $0.00014 $0.00837

Measured yesterday against content hash 485beaf14a3e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

kb-init 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.

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.

obsidian-kb/skills/kb-init/SKILL.md · 699 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 699 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

kb-init - Initialize Project Knowledge Base

Dispatch parallel subagents to explore the codebase, then populate the Obsidian vault with a curated set of architectural notes, references, and overviews. Mines existing project markdown docs (README, ARCHITECTURE, CHANGELOG, etc.) for insights, but verifies every concrete claim against the current code so stale documentation doesn't pollute the vault.

Turns an empty vault (or a thin one) into a rich knowledge base the next agent can hit the ground running with - and flags which existing project docs are outdated.

Step 0: Preflight - Obsidian available and running?

Follow the Preflight Check in the obsidian-kb awareness skill (${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/obsidian-kb/SKILL.md). In short:

  1. command -v obsidian - if missing, check if the app is installed; if neither, show cross-platform install instructions (brew install --cask obsidian / flatpak install flathub md.obsidian.Obsidian / winget install Obsidian.Obsidian, or https://obsidian.md/download) and stop.
  2. timeout 3 obsidian vaults - if it fails, launch Obsidian (open -a Obsidian on macOS, equivalent for Linux/Windows), wait 2-3 seconds, retry.
  3. Only proceed once obsidian vaults succeeds.

Step 1: Resolve the Project Vault (strict)

Follow the Vault Resolution Algorithm in ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/obsidian-kb/SKILL.md. Strict priority order:

  1. User argument (vault name) → fuzzy-match once, confirm.
  2. Path overlap - exactly one vault whose path is inside $PWD or vice versa.
  3. Frontmatter project_path - a root note's YAML matches $PWD exactly.
  4. Strong name match - word-boundary substring match, exactly one candidate.
  5. STOP and ask - if tiers 1–4 fail, list vaults and ask. Offer the "create a new vault for this project" option (the "If no vault exists" branch below).

This skill writes substantial content to the vault (5-8 notes). Writing to the wrong vault would pollute it. When uncertain, ASK.

Read the full file on GitHub · 699 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. yesterday First seen · 699 lines · 140 tokens per session scan A 485beaf14a3e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

kb-init is a skill published in the GitHub repository waelmas/codeplow (8 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 140 tokens to every session and 8,368 once invoked, about $0.0007 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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