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This page collects short recipes for everyday development. For higher-level guidance on prompting and context management, see Best practices. This page covers:

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Prompt recipes

These are prompt patterns for everyday tasks like exploring unfamiliar code, debugging, refactoring, writing tests, and creating PRs. Each works in any Claude Code surface; adapt the wording to your project.

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Understand new codebases

For configuring Claude Code in a monorepo or large codebase, see Monorepos and large repos.

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Get a quick codebase overview

Suppose you’ve just joined a new project and need to understand its structure quickly.
1

Navigate to the project root directory

Replace /path/to/project with the path to your project.
2

Start Claude Code

3

Ask for a high-level overview

4

Dive deeper into specific components

Tips:
  • Start with broad questions, then narrow down to specific areas
  • Ask about coding conventions and patterns used in the project
  • Request a glossary of project-specific terms

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Find relevant code

Suppose you need to locate code related to a specific feature or functionality.
1

Ask Claude to find relevant files

2

Get context on how components interact

3

Understand the execution flow