Codebase Recon

Analyze git history to understand a codebase before reading any code. Reveals project health, risk areas, team structure, and development momentum.

Inspired by "The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code" by Ally Piechowski.

Phase 1: Probe

Before running analysis, determine repo scale to calibrate time windows and result counts.

Run this single shell command to collect repo vitals:

echo "COMMITS=$(git rev-list --count HEAD)" && \
echo "FIRST_COMMIT=$(git log --reverse --format='%ad' --date=short | head -1)" && \
echo "LATEST_COMMIT=$(git log --format='%ad' --date=short | head -1)" && \
echo "BRANCHES=$(git branch -a | wc -l | tr -d ' ')"