Build & submit taskBetabeginner

Onboard Onto an Unknown Codebase with Claude Code

Clone a repository you have never read, drive Claude Code to build you a guided tour (entry points, one real flow traced end to end, where the tests live), then fact-check its claims and run the tests yourself. Submit the tour plus your verification evidence for instant, rubric-based feedback.

1 hr

Est. time

Outcomes

Rubric criteria

60%

Pass score

What you'll learn

Skills you'll have real reps in after shipping this.

Agentic search, not reading everything

Claude Code maps a repo by searching for the right entry points and reading only the hits. Watching that pattern teaches you how it stays useful on codebases far bigger than any context window.

Trust, but verify

A tour is a set of claims, and agents state wrong claims with the same confidence as right ones. Fact-checking three of them calibrates exactly how much verification an agent's output needs.

Onboarding is the killer first use

Mapping an unfamiliar codebase is the highest-value, lowest-risk way to start using Claude Code at work: read-only, immediately useful, and it compounds into every task after it.

The scenario

First day on a new team. There is a repository, there is no onboarding doc, and the one person who understands the code is on vacation. The old way is two days of opening files at random. The new way is an agent that can search and read the whole thing for you, IF you know how to drive it and how much to trust what it says.

This task is that first day, for real. You will point Claude Code at a codebase you have genuinely never read, get a working mental map in under an hour, and, because agents can be confidently wrong, verify the map before you rely on it.

Your role

You are a developer onboarding onto an unfamiliar codebase. Your deliverable is a tour of the repository produced by driving Claude Code, plus evidence that you checked the tour against reality: three fact-checked claims and a real test run.

Start the task to unlock the full brief

You'll get the step-by-step requirements, setup commands, the 6-criterion grading rubric, tips, and the ability to submit your solution for instant AI grading.

Free to start · submit when you're ready

Learning resources

Common workflows: explore a codebase

The official recipes, including codebase exploration and Q&A.

Claude Code overview

Install, authentication, and first-session basics.

Learn a new codebase in an hour, hands-on

Onboarding onto an unfamiliar codebase is the single most useful first thing to do with Claude Code, and this task makes you do it for real: clone a repository you have never read, drive the agent to map it (entry points, one flow traced file by file, where the tests live), then fact-check its claims and run the tests yourself. You come away with a working mental map, a verification habit that calibrates how much to trust agent output, and a repeatable onboarding technique you can use on your first day anywhere.