Token-optimized structural code search using tree-sitter AST parsing. Use instead of reading full files when you need to understand code structure, find functions, or explore a codebase efficiently.
Installs just this skill. Get the whole plugin for auto-invocation.
⚡ How it fires
How this skill gets triggered: by you, by Claude, or both.
Fires itselfClaude auto-loads it when your prompt matches the work.
You can call itInvoke it directly when you want it.
Slash command/smart-explore
👁️ Context preview
The summary Claude sees to decide when to auto-load this skill.
Token-optimized structural code search using tree-sitter AST parsing. Use instead of reading full files when you need to understand code structure, find functions, or explore a codebase efficiently.
📊 Stats
Stars88,332
Forks7,667
LanguageJavaScript
LicenseApache-2.0
📦 Ships with claude-mem
</> SKILL.md
smart-explore.SKILL.md
---name: smart-explore
description: Token-optimized structural code search using tree-sitter AST parsing. Use instead of reading full files when you need to understand code structure, find functions, or explore a codebase efficiently.
---# Smart Explore
Structural code exploration using AST parsing. **This skill overrides your default exploration behavior.** While this skill is active, use smart_search/smart_outline/smart_unfold as your primary tools instead of Read, Grep, and Glob.
**Core principle:** Index first, fetch on demand. Give yourself a map of the code before loading implementation details. The question before every file read should be: "do I need to see all of this, or can I get a structural overview first?" The answer is almost always: get the map.
## Your Next Tool Call
This skill only loads instructions. You must call the MCP tools yourself. Your next action should be one of:
```
smart_search(query="<topic>", path="./src") -- discover files + symbols across a directory
smart_outline(file_path="<file>") -- structural skeleton of one file
smart_unfold(file_path="<file>", symbol_name="<name>") -- full source of one symbol
```
Do NOT run Grep, Glob, Read, or find to discover files first. `smart_search` walks directories, parses all code files, and returns ranked symbols in one call. It replaces the Glob → Grep → Read discovery cycle.
## 3-Layer Workflow
### Step 1: Search -- Discover Files and Symbols
**Returns:** Full source code of the specified symbol including JSDoc, decorators, and complete implementation (~400-2,100 tokens depending on symbol size). AST node boundaries guarantee completeness regardless of symbol size — unlike Read + agent summarization, which may truncate long methods.
**Parameters:**
- `file_path` (string, required) -- Path to the file (as returned by search/outline)
- `symbol_name` (string, required) -- Name of the function/class/method to expand
## When to Use Standard Tools Instead
Use these only when smart_* tools are the wrong fit:
- **Grep:** Exact string/regex search ("find all TODO comments", "where is `ensureWorkerStarted` defined?")
- **Read:** Small files under ~100 lines, non-code files (JSON, markdown, config)
- **Glob:** File path patterns ("find all test files")
- **Explore agent:** When you need synthesized understanding across 6+ files, architecture narratives, or answers to open-ended questions like "how does this entire system work end-to-end?" Smart-explore is a scalpel — it answers "where is this?" and "show me that." It doesn't synthesize cross-file data flows, design decisions, or edge cases across an entire feature.
For code files over ~100 lines, prefer smart_outline + smart_unfold over Read.
## Workflow Examples
**Discover how a feature works (cross-cutting):**
```
1. smart_search(query="shutdown", path="./src")
-> 14 symbols across 7 files, full picture in one call
**4-8x savings** on file understanding (outline + unfold vs Read). **11-18x savings** on codebase exploration vs Explore agent. The narrower the query, the wider the gap — a 27-line function costs 55x less to read via unfold than via an Explore agent, because the agent still reads the entire file.
## Language Support
Smart-explore uses **tree-sitter AST parsing** for structural analysis. Unsupported file types fall back to text-based search.
### Bundled Languages
| Language | Extensions |
|----------|-----------|
| JavaScript | `.js`, `.mjs`, `.cjs` |
| TypeScript | `.ts` |
| TSX / JSX | `.tsx`, `.jsx` |
| Python | `.py`, `.pyw` |
| Go | `.go` |
| Rust | `.rs` |
| Ruby | `.rb` |
| Java | `.java` |
| C | `.c`, `.h` |
| C++ | `.cpp`, `.cc`, `.cxx`, `.hpp`, `.hh` |
Files with unrecognized extensions are parsed as plain text — `smart_search` still works (grep-style), but `smart_outline` and `smart_unfold` will not extract structured symbols.
### Custom Grammars (`.claude-mem.json`)
You can register additional tree-sitter grammars for file types not in the bundled list. Create or update `.claude-mem.json` in your project root:
```json
{
"grammars": {
"solidity": {
"package": "tree-sitter-solidity",
"extensions": [".sol"],
"query": "solidity-query.scm"
}
}
}
```
Each key is a language name. `package` is the npm package of the tree-sitter grammar and `extensions` lists the file extensions it covers; the package must be installed in the project's `node_modules` (`npm install tree-sitter-solidity`). `query` (optional) is a path, relative to the config file, to a tree-sitter query whose captures (`@func`, `@cls`, `@method`, `@iface`, `@enm`, `@struct_def`, `@imp`) extract symbols. Without `query`, a minimal generic pattern is used — it only matches grammars that define `function_declaration`/`class_declaration` node types, and query compilation fails silently (0 symbols) for grammars that lack them, so a custom query is effectively required for most languages. Once registered, `smart_outline` and `smart_unfold` parse those extensions structurally instead of falling back to plain text.
### Markdown Special Support
Markdown files (`.md`, `.mdx`) receive special handling beyond the generic plain-text fallback:
- **`smart_outline`** — extracts headings (`#`, `##`, `###`) as the symbol tree. Use it to navigate long documents without reading the full file.
- **`smart_search`** — searches within code fences as well as prose, so queries for function names inside ` ```ts ``` ` blocks work as expected.
- **`smart_unfold`** — expands heading sections rather than function bodies; each section up to the next same-level heading is returned as a chunk.
- **Frontmatter** — YAML frontmatter (lines between leading `---` delimiters) is included in `smart_outline` output under a synthetic `frontmatter` symbol so metadata like `title:` and `description:` is visible without reading the whole file.
