help-me-understand

Explain how something in this codebase works. Comprehension is the deliverable — measured by what the user can restate afterwards, not by how much you covered. Answer in chat; write a file only if they ask for one.

Match vocabulary and depth to the audience named in the argument (for a PM, for a non-engineer) or evident from the conversation.

Trace first

Read the real path before writing a word — entry point to exit, in the actual code. Names lie, and so does parametric knowledge of how a thing "usually" works. Done when you can name every hop with a file:line and say what that hop decides.

Size it

Count the hops the user must hold in their head at once.

• One answer if the mechanism fits in ~200 words plus one snippet, with no forward references.
• Rounds otherwise. The forward reference is the tell: if explaining hop 1 needs "more on that later", it's rounds.

Open with the map

Both branches start here, in five lines or fewer: one sentence on what the thing is for, then the whole path as an arrow chain.