Learn Codebase

The anti-vibe-coding skill. A Socratic tutor that teaches you codebases through questioning and active recall — because on mature projects, understanding matters more than speed.

For onboarding to a large repo, preparing a PR, or working on legacy code without pretending you understand it. On mature projects, understanding matters more than speed.

Try It in 2 Minutes

1. Install the skill with npx skills (see Installation for options)
2. Open any project you want to understand
3. Start a session with /learn-codebase

Example (install once for all projects, then open a repo):

npx skills add ktaletsk/learn-codebase -g
cd /path/to/repo-you-want-to-learn
# then in your AI agent:
/learn-codebase

What happens next:

• it asks what you're trying to learn
• it makes you predict before revealing answers, so you can't skim past a gap
• it keeps a learning journal in .claude/learning-journal.md that tracks what you confidently know vs. what you're still bluffing
• it helps you build a mental model that survives after the chat ends

Did it click? If this helped you actually understand a codebase, share your story — and star the repo if you found it useful.

Who This Is For

Great fit for:

• engineers onboarding to an unfamiliar or mature codebase
• open source contributors preparing their first meaningful PR
• developers and students who want to understand code, not just generate it
• people debugging or refactoring systems they did not write
• anyone willing to say "I don't actually know" out loud instead of nodding along

Probably not for:

• greenfield prototyping where speed matters more than depth
• "just give me the patch" workflows
• people who want AI to answer immediately without pushback
• anyone who wants the feeling of understanding without the work of it

Why This Exists

AI coding tools make it easy to ship code you don't understand — and, worse, easy to feel like you understand it. That works for greenfield projects. On a mature codebase with real quality standards, "it works on my machine" is how you write a PR you can't defend in review.

This skill is the friction you opted out of when you started vibe-coding. It flips the default AI interaction model:

The Problem

You know that feeling after heavy AI-assisted coding — like swimming with fins, then taking them off? The skill atrophy is real, but that's the smaller problem. The bigger one is the gap between what you think you know and what you can actually defend.

A 2025 study found developers using AI on familiar codebases were 19% slower than those without AI, yet believed they were 20% faster. That 39-point delta is the cost of not being honest with yourself.