Open source alternatives to acquire-codebase-knowledge

A

acquire-codebase-knowledge

The user explicitly asks to map, document, or onboard into an existing codebase

acquire-codebase-knowledge is an agent skill from the github/awesome-copilot collection that maps an existing codebase and writes the documentation a new contributor needs to work on it. It is triggered when a user asks to map, document or onboard into a codebase. Its output is seven documents placed in a docs/codebase directory: STACK.md for the technologies in use, STRUCTURE.md for the layout of the project, ARCHITECTURE.md for how the parts fit together, CONVENTIONS.md for the coding conventions, INTEGRATIONS.md for the external services the project connects to, TESTING.md for how the project is tested, and CONCERNS.md for known risks and problems. The skill has a strict rule that only verifiable facts are written down. Every claim must be traceable to a source file, a configuration file or terminal output, and anything not known is marked as TODO, while decisions that depend on intent are marked as questions for the user. Each document lists the concrete file paths it relies on as evidence. The final response must include the numbered questions for the user and any places where the intended design differs from the code as it is. The skill is useful for onboarding onto an unfamiliar repository, for handing a project to a new team, and for producing a shared map before a large change. Because the documents are generated from the code, they should be reviewed and corrected by the people who know the project. The skill is installed with the skills CLI from the github/awesome-copilot repository. Its skills.sh page showed about 2.1K installs and passing results from three security audits at the time of the scan.