Analyzing Projects

When to Load

• Trigger: Onboarding to a new project, "how does this work" questions, codebase exploration, understanding unfamiliar code
• Skip: Already familiar with the project structure and patterns

Project Analysis Workflow

Copy this checklist and track progress:

Project Analysis Progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Quick overview (README, root files)
- [ ] Step 2: Detect tech stack
- [ ] Step 3: Map project structure
- [ ] Step 4: Identify key patterns
- [ ] Step 5: Find development workflow
- [ ] Step 6: Generate summary report

Step 1: Quick Overview

# Check for common project markers
ls -la
cat README.md 2>/dev/null | head -50

Step 2: Tech Stack Detection

Package Managers & Dependencies

• package.json → Node.js/JavaScript/TypeScript
• requirements.txt / pyproject.toml / setup.py → Python
• go.mod → Go
• Cargo.toml → Rust
• pom.xml / build.gradle → Java
• Gemfile → Ruby

Frameworks (from dependencies)

• React, Vue, Angular, Next.js, Nuxt
• Express, FastAPI, Django, Flask, Rails
• Spring Boot, Gin, Echo

Infrastructure

• Dockerfile, docker-compose.yml → Containerized
• kubernetes/, k8s/ → Kubernetes
• terraform/, .tf files → IaC
• serverless.yml → Serverless Framework
• .github/workflows/ → GitHub Actions

Step 3: Project Structure Analysis

Present as a tree with annotations:

project/
├── src/              # Source code
│   ├── components/   # UI components (React/Vue)
│   ├── services/     # Business logic
│   ├── models/       # Data models
│   └── utils/        # Shared utilities
├── tests/            # Test files
├── docs/             # Documentation
└── config/           # Configuration

Step 4: Key Patterns Identification

Look for and report: