Understand Anything Knowledge Graph

Understand Anything — Codebase Knowledge Graph

Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection.

Understand Anything is a Claude Code plugin that runs a multi-agent pipeline over your project, builds a knowledge graph of every file, function, class, and dependency, and opens an interactive React dashboard for visual exploration. It produces plain-English summaries of every node so anyone — developer, PM, or designer — can understand the codebase.

Installation

Via Claude Code plugin marketplace

/plugin marketplace add Lum1104/Understand-Anything/plugin install understand-anything

From source (development)

git clone https://github.com/Lum1104/Understand-Anythingcd Understand-Anythingpnpm installpnpm --filter @understand-anything/core buildpnpm --filter @understand-anything/skill buildpnpm --filter @understand-anything/dashboard build

Core Skills / Commands

Typical Workflow

1. Analyze a project

# Inside any project directory, in Claude Code:/understand

This orchestrates 5 agents in sequence (with file-analyzers running up to 3 concurrent):

1. project-scanner — discovers files, detects languages/frameworks
2. file-analyzer — extracts functions, classes, imports; builds graph nodes and edges
3. architecture-analyzer — groups nodes into architectural layers (API, Service, Data, UI, Utility)
4. tour-builder — generates ordered learning tours
5. graph-reviewer — validates referential integrity

Output is saved to .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json in your project root.

2. Open the dashboard

/understand-dashboard

The React + Vite dashboard opens in your browser. Features:

• Graph view — React Flow canvas, color-coded by layer, zoom/pan
• Node inspector — click any node for code, relationships, LLM summary
• Search — fuzzy + semantic search across all nodes
• Tours — guided walkthroughs ordered by dependency
• Persona mode — toggle detail level (Junior Dev / PM / Power User)

3. Ask questions

/understand-chat How does authentication work in this project?/understand-chat What calls the payment service?/understand-chat Which files are most depended on?

4. Review diff impact before committing

# After making changes:/understand-diff

Returns a list of affected nodes in the knowledge graph — shows ripple effects before you push.

5. Explain a specific file

/understand-explain src/auth/login.ts/understand-explain src/services/PaymentService.ts

Knowledge Graph Schema

The graph is stored at .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json. Key types (from packages/core):

// packages/core/src/types.ts
interface GraphNode {  id: string;                    // unique: "file:src/auth/login.ts"  type: "file" | "function" | "class" | "module";  name: string;  filePath: string;  layer: ArchitectureLayer;      // "api" | "service" | "data" | "ui" | "utility"  summary: string;               // LLM-generated plain-English description  code?: string;                 // raw source snippet  language?: string;  concepts?: LanguageConcept[];  // e.g. "generics", "closures", "decorators"  metadata?: Record<string, unknown>;}
interface GraphEdge {  id: string;  source: string;                // node id  target: string;                // node id  type: "imports" | "calls" | "extends" | "implements" | "uses";  label?: string;}
interface KnowledgeGraph {  version: string;  generatedAt: string;  projectRoot: string;  nodes: GraphNode[];  edges: GraphEdge[];  tours: GuidedTour[];}
type ArchitectureLayer = "api" | "service" | "data" | "ui" | "utility" | "unknown";
type LanguageConcept =  | "generics"  | "closures"  | "decorators"  | "async-await"  | "interfaces"  | "higher-order-functions"  | "dependency-injection"  | "observers"  | "iterators"  | "pattern-matching"  | "monads"  | "currying";

Working with the Core Package Programmatically

import { loadKnowledgeGraph, searchGraph, buildTour } from "@understand-anything/core";
// Load the persisted graphconst graph = await loadKnowledgeGraph(".understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json");
// Fuzzy search across all nodesconst results = searchGraph(graph, "payment processing");console.log(results.map(r => `${r.type}:${r.name} (${r.filePath})`));
// Find all callers of a functionconst paymentNode = graph.nodes.find(n => n.name === "processPayment");const callers = graph.edges  .filter(e => e.target === paymentNode?.id && e.type === "calls")  .map(e => graph.nodes.find(n => n.id === e.source));
// Get all nodes in the service layerconst serviceNodes = graph.nodes.filter(n => n.layer === "service");
// Build a guided tour starting from a specific nodeconst tour = buildTour(graph, { startNodeId: "file:src/index.ts" });tour.steps.forEach((step, i) => {  console.log(`Step ${i + 1}: ${step.node.name} — ${step.node.summary}`);});

Dashboard Development

# Start the dashboard dev server (hot reload)pnpm dev:dashboard
# Build for productionpnpm --filter @understand-anything/dashboard build

The dashboard is a Vite + React 18 app using:

• React Flow — graph canvas rendering
• Zustand — graph state management
• TailwindCSS v4 — styling
• Fuse.js — fuzzy search
• web-tree-sitter — in-browser AST parsing
• Dagre — automatic graph layout

Project Structure

understand-anything-plugin/├── .claude-plugin/          # Plugin manifest (read by Claude Code)├── agents/                  # Agent definitions (project-scanner, file-analyzer, etc.)├── skills/                  # Skill definitions (/understand, /understand-chat, etc.)├── src/                     # Plugin TypeScript source│   ├── context-builder.ts   # Builds LLM context from the graph│   └── diff-analyzer.ts     # Git diff → affected nodes├── packages/│   ├── core/                # Analysis engine│   │   ├── src/│   │   │   ├── types.ts     # GraphNode, GraphEdge, KnowledgeGraph│   │   │   ├── persistence.ts│   │   │   ├── search.ts    # Fuzzy + semantic search│   │   │   ├── tours.ts     # Tour generation│   │   │   ├── schema.ts    # Zod validation schemas│   │   │   └── tree-sitter.ts│   │   └── tests/│   └── dashboard/           # React dashboard app│       └── src/

Incremental Updates

Re-running /understand only re-analyzes files that changed since the last run (based on mtime and content hash stored in the graph metadata). For large monorepos this makes subsequent runs fast.

To force a full re-analysis:

rm -rf .understand-anything//understand

Development Commands

pnpm install                                        # Install all dependenciespnpm --filter @understand-anything/core build       # Build core packagepnpm --filter @understand-anything/core test        # Run core testspnpm --filter @understand-anything/skill build      # Build plugin packagepnpm --filter @understand-anything/skill test       # Run plugin testspnpm --filter @understand-anything/dashboard build  # Build dashboardpnpm dev:dashboard                                  # Dashboard dev server with HMR

Common Patterns

Before a code review

# See what your diff actually touches in the architecture/understand-diff

Onboarding a new engineer

# Generate a structured onboarding doc grounded in the real code/understand-onboard

Researching a feature area

/understand-chat What are all the entry points for the GraphQL API?/understand-explain src/graphql/resolvers/

Understanding an unfamiliar module

/understand-explain src/workers/queue-processor.ts# Returns: summary, key functions, what calls it, what it calls, concepts used

Troubleshooting

/understand times out on large repos

• The file-analyzer runs up to 3 workers concurrently. Very large repos (>50k files) may need patience. Delete .understand-anything/ and re-run if a previous run was interrupted.

Dashboard doesn't open

• Run pnpm --filter @understand-anything/dashboard build first if working from source, then retry /understand-dashboard.

Stale graph after major refactor

• Delete .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json to force full re-analysis: rm .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json && /understand

pnpm install fails with workspace errors

• Ensure you are using pnpm v8+: pnpm --version. The project uses pnpm workspaces defined in pnpm-workspace.yaml.

Search returns no results

• Confirm the graph was generated: cat .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json | head -5. If empty or missing, run /understand first.

Contributing

# Fork, then:git checkout -b feature/my-featurepnpm --filter @understand-anything/core test   # must pass# open a PR — file an issue first for major changes

License: MIT © Lum1104