Understand Onboard

---
name: understand-onboard
description: Use when you need to generate an onboarding guide for new team members joining a project
---

# /understand-onboard

Generate a comprehensive onboarding guide from the project's knowledge graph.

## Graph Structure Reference

The knowledge graph JSON has this structure:
- `project` — {name, description, languages, frameworks, analyzedAt, gitCommitHash}
- `nodes[]` — each has {id, type, name, filePath, summary, tags[], complexity, languageNotes?}
  - Node types: file, function, class, module, concept
  - IDs: `file:path`, `func:path:name`, `class:path:name`
- `edges[]` — each has {source, target, type, direction, weight}
  - Key types: imports, contains, calls, depends_on
- `layers[]` — each has {id, name, description, nodeIds[]}
- `tour[]` — each has {order, title, description, nodeIds[]}

## How to Read Efficiently

1. Use Grep to search within the JSON for relevant entries BEFORE reading the full file
2. Only read sections you need — don't dump the entire graph into context
3. Node names and summaries are the most useful fields for understanding
4. Edges tell you how components connect — follow imports and calls for dependency chains

## Instructions

1. Check that `.understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json` exists. If not, tell the user to run `/understand` first.

2. **Read project metadata** — use Grep or Read with a line limit to extract the `"project"` section (name, description, languages, frameworks).

3. **Read layers** — Grep for `"layers"` to get the full layers array. These define the architecture and will structure the guide.

4. **Read the tour** — Grep for `"tour"` to get the guided walkthrough steps. These provide the recommended learning path.

5. **Read file-level nodes only** — use Grep to find nodes with `"type": "file"` in the knowledge graph. Skip function-level and class-level nodes to keep the guide high-level. Extract each file node's `name`, `filePath`, `summary`, and `complexity`.

6. **Identify complexity hotspots** — from the file-level nodes, find those with the highest `complexity` values. These are areas new developers should approach carefully.

7. **Generate the onboarding guide** with these sections:
   - **Project Overview**: name, languages, frameworks, description (from project metadata)
   - **Architecture Layers**: each layer's name, description, and key files (from layers + file nodes)
   - **Key Concepts**: important patterns and design decisions (from node summaries and tags)
   - **Guided Tour**: step-by-step walkthrough (from the tour section)
   - **File Map**: what each key file does (from file-level nodes, organized by layer)
   - **Complexity Hotspots**: areas to approach carefully (from complexity values)

8. Format as clean markdown
9. Offer to save the guide to `docs/ONBOARDING.md` in the project
10. Suggest the user commit it to the repo for the team