The Problem
You are hiring fast and three new developers start on Monday. Your codebase is 150k lines of TypeScript evolved over 4 years with undocumented architectural decisions everywhere. Your README says "run npm install and npm dev" and nothing else. Each new hire will spend 2-3 weeks figuring out where things live and how they connect, burning months of productivity and exhausting your senior devs with repeated questions.
The Solution
Use the understand-anything skill suite to generate a comprehensive onboarding guide from your codebase's knowledge graph. New developers get a structured architecture walkthrough, a visual dependency map, and self-service Q&A that answers architecture questions grounded in real code. Senior devs stop being the bottleneck.
Step-by-Step Walkthrough
1. Build the knowledge graph
Before new hires arrive, generate the codebase knowledge graph:
/understand
This produces .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json with every file, function, class, and their relationships mapped. Takes 2-10 minutes depending on codebase size.
2. Generate the onboarding guide
Run the onboarding skill to create a structured guide:
/understand-onboard
This generates docs/ONBOARDING.md containing: project overview (tech stack, frameworks, design decisions), architecture layers (with key files per layer), a guided tour (step-by-step walkthrough of the codebase), a file map (what each key file does), and complexity hotspots (files new devs should approach carefully).
3. Walk through architecture visually
On day one, walk new hires through the dashboard:
/understand-dashboard
Open http://localhost:5173 together and show the layer view, follow a request flow through the system, highlight dependency clusters, and point out complexity hotspots. Visual exploration builds a mental model far better than reading code alone.
4. Set up self-service Q&A
Give every new hire a way to answer their own architecture questions:
/understand-chat how does the permission system work?
/understand-chat where is email sending handled?
/understand-chat what happens when a subscription expires?
The chat skill searches the knowledge graph and answers with specific file paths, function names, layer context, and related components. This alone cuts "quick question" interruptions by 50%.
5. Deep-dive on assigned areas
When a new developer gets their first ticket, use explain to understand the relevant code:
/understand-explain src/billing/subscription.ts
/understand-explain src/auth/session.ts:createSession
This provides the component's role in the architecture, internal structure, external connections, data flow, and complexity notes.
Real-World Example
A team lead onboards 3 developers onto a 150k-line TypeScript monorepo (Next.js, Prisma, tRPC). On Friday before they start, they run /understand and /understand-onboard to generate a 6-layer architecture guide with a 8-step guided tour. On Monday, day-one walkthrough with /understand-dashboard takes 45 minutes. By Tuesday, each new developer is using /understand-chat to answer their own questions. By Wednesday, they run /understand-explain on their assigned areas and submit their first PRs. By Friday, all three have merged production code. Onboarding time drops from 3 weeks to 4 days.
Related Skills
- understand-onboard -- Generate the onboarding guide
- understand-chat -- Self-service architecture Q&A
- understand-explain -- Deep-dive on specific components
- understand-dashboard -- Visual architecture explorer
- understand-diff -- Understand impact of first PRs