claw-ideas/ideas/learning-knowledge/explain-codebase-onboarder.md

"Explain This Codebase" Onboarder

Automatically generate onboarding documentation for new repositories, including architecture overview, setup steps, and contribution map.

Problem

Joining a new codebase is slow when critical context is distributed across docs, commits, and unwritten team knowledge.

Core capabilities

• Detect project structure, key services, and dependency boundaries.
• Generate a newcomer guide: how to run, debug, and test locally.
• Identify important code paths for common tasks and incidents.
• Create role-specific onboarding paths for backend, frontend, or ops.

MVP scope

• Repository scan with language-aware parsing.
• Onboarding markdown output with linked file references.
• Refresh docs automatically on major structural changes.

Success criteria

• Reduced time to first meaningful contribution.
• Fewer repetitive onboarding questions in team channels.

Stretch ideas

• Interactive onboarding checklist with progress tracking.
• Team-specific glossary extraction from code and docs.