Codebase Onboarding Guide
By side.quest.teo · Published · Updated
Gives a new engineer a first-week path through a codebase: how to run it, where things live, how to change it safely and who to ask.
Prompt template
## Codebase Onboarding Guide Write an onboarding guide for new engineers on this codebase. - Project name and purpose: [textarea: What it does and for whom] - Tech stack: [text: Languages and frameworks and datastores] - Repository layout: [textarea: Paste a directory listing or describe the main folders] - Setup steps as known today: [textarea: Commands people run to get started] - Testing and release process: [textarea: How changes are tested and shipped] - Team conventions: [textarea: Branching or review rules or style guides] - Experience of the reader: [dropdown: Junior, Mid level, Senior new to the stack] Organise the guide as a first week. Day one: get it running locally, with exact commands, the checks that confirm success, and the three setup problems most likely to appear. Then a map of the codebase: for each main folder, one sentence on what lives there and what not to touch lightly, plus how a request or user action travels through the layers. Describe how to make a safe first change: where to write the test, how to run only it, how review works and how it ships. List the vocabulary and domain terms a newcomer will hear. Finish with a ladder of three starter tasks of rising difficulty and the people or channels to ask for each kind of help. Mark any gap in the input as "to be filled by the team" instead of guessing.