/understand-domain

Extracts business domain knowledge — domains, business flows, and process steps — from a codebase and produces an interactive horizontal flow graph in the dashboard.

How It Works

• If a knowledge graph already exists (.understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json), derives domain knowledge from it (cheap, no file scanning)
• If no knowledge graph exists, performs a lightweight scan: file tree + entry point detection + sampled files
• Use --full flag to force a fresh scan even if a knowledge graph exists

Instructions

Phase 1: Detect Existing Graph

1. Check if .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json exists in the current project
2. If it exists AND --full was NOT passed → proceed to Phase 3 (derive from graph)
3. Otherwise → proceed to Phase 2 (lightweight scan)

Phase 2: Lightweight Scan (Path 1)

The preprocessing script does NOT produce a domain graph — it produces raw material (file tree, entry points, exports/imports) so the domain-analyzer agent can focus on the actual domain analysis instead of spending dozens of tool calls exploring the codebase. Think of it as a cheat sheet: cheap Python preprocessing → expensive LLM gets a clean, small input → better results for less cost.

1. Run the preprocessing script bundled with this skill:

   python ./extract-domain-context.py <project-root>
   

   This outputs <project-root>/.understand-anything/intermediate/domain-context.json containing:
   • File tree (respecting .gitignore)
   • Detected entry points (HTTP routes, CLI commands, event handlers, cron jobs, exported handlers)
   • File signatures (exports, imports per file)
   • Code snippets for each entry point (signature + first few lines)
   • Project metadata (package.json, README, etc.)
2. Read the generated domain-context.json as context for Phase 4
3. Proceed to Phase 4

Phase 3: Derive from Existing Graph (Path 2)

1. Read .understand-anything/knowledge-graph.json
2. Format the graph data as structured context:
   • All nodes with their types, names, summaries, and tags
   • All edges with their types (especially calls, imports, contains)
   • All layers with their descriptions
   • Tour steps if available
3. This is the context for the domain analyzer — no file reading needed
4. Proceed to Phase 4

Phase 4: Domain Analysis

1. Read the domain-analyzer agent prompt from agents/domain-analyzer.md
2. Dispatch a subagent with the domain-analyzer prompt + the context from Phase 2 or 3
3. The agent writes its output to .understand-anything/intermediate/domain-analysis.json

Phase 5: Validate and Save

1. Read the domain analysis output
2. Validate using the standard graph validation pipeline (the schema now supports domain/flow/step types)
3. If validation fails, log warnings but save what's valid (error tolerance)
4. Save to .understand-anything/domain-graph.json
5. Clean up .understand-anything/intermediate/domain-analysis.json and .understand-anything/intermediate/domain-context.json

Phase 6: Launch Dashboard

1. Auto-trigger /understand-dashboard to visualize the domain graph
2. The dashboard will detect domain-graph.json and show the domain view by default