Orient

Systematically explore a codebase and produce a structured orientation that tells a developer everything they need to start working productively. Depth scales with project size — small projects get a tight summary, large projects get a layered map.

Phase 1 — Project Identity

Establish what the project is before reading any source code.

Read top-level files (in order of priority)

1. README.md / README — stated purpose, setup instructions, feature list
2. AGENTS.md — architecture boundaries, "always do / never do" rules
3. .cursor/rules/ — workspace conventions for this project
4. Manifest file — package.json, pyproject.toml, Cargo.toml, go.mod, pom.xml, Gemfile, composer.json, or equivalent
5. CONTRIBUTING.md, ARCHITECTURE.md, docs/ index — if present