The Problem
Your codebase has 200,000+ lines of code. New developers take weeks to onboard. Senior devs are constantly interrupted to explain "how X works." Architecture docs go stale the moment they're written. You need a system that understands your code and can answer questions about it automatically.
The Solution
Use the understand-anything skill suite to generate a machine-readable knowledge graph of your entire codebase. The graph maps every file, function, class, and their relationships into a queryable JSON structure. Once built, developers can chat with the codebase, visualize dependencies, and get architecture answers grounded in real code paths.
Step-by-Step Walkthrough
1. Analyze your project
Run the knowledge graph builder on your codebase:
/understand
This scans all source files, extracts entities (files, functions, classes), maps relationships (imports, calls, dependencies), assigns complexity scores, identifies architectural layers, and builds a guided tour. The result is saved to .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json.
2. Chat with your codebase
Use /understand-chat to ask architecture questions:
/understand-chat how does authentication work?
/understand-chat what calls the payment service?
/understand-chat which files are most critical to the API layer?
The skill searches the graph for relevant nodes, follows edges to find connected components, and answers with specific file paths, function names, and architectural context.
3. Launch the visual dashboard
See the knowledge graph as an interactive visualization:
/understand-dashboard
This starts a local Vite server at http://localhost:5173 with a force-directed node graph, layer views, dependency explorer, complexity heatmap, and search filtering.
4. Integrate into CI/CD
Keep the knowledge graph fresh by regenerating on every merge to main:
# .github/workflows/knowledge-graph.yml
name: Update Knowledge Graph
on:
push:
branches: [main]
jobs:
update-graph:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Generate knowledge graph
run: npx understand-anything analyze --output .understand-anything/
- name: Commit updated graph
run: |
git config user.name "github-actions[bot]"
git add .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json
git commit -m "chore: update knowledge graph" || true
git push
Real-World Example
A team with a 200k-line TypeScript monorepo (Next.js, tRPC, Prisma) runs /understand and generates a knowledge graph with 312 nodes across 6 architectural layers. A new developer asks /understand-chat how does billing work? and gets a response mapping the full flow: src/api/checkout.ts calls src/services/payment.ts, which calls src/integrations/stripe.ts, with the subscription state machine in src/billing/subscription.ts (complexity: 18) managing 12 possible transitions. The developer understands the billing architecture in 5 minutes instead of spending 2 days reading code.
Related Skills
- understand-chat -- Ask questions about the codebase
- understand-dashboard -- Visual graph explorer
- understand-onboard -- Generate onboarding guides
- understand-diff -- Analyze PRs with graph context