Instant Project Onboarding — generate a complete onboarding guide for any project. Use when user wants to onboard a new developer, understand a new codebase, or generate project documentation.
Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.
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---
name: onboard
description: "Instant Project Onboarding — generate a complete onboarding guide for any project. Use when user wants to onboard a new developer, understand a new codebase, or generate project documentation."
allowed-tools: Bash, Read, Grep, Glob, Write
---
# Instant Project Onboarding
One command generates everything a new developer needs to be productive in your codebase.
## Process
### Phase 1: Analyze
```bash
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/tools/onboard-generator.mjs <project-directory>
```
Parse the JSON output.
### Phase 2: Present Onboarding Guide
Format the output as a comprehensive onboarding document:
**Project Overview:**
- Name, description, version
- Tech stack (with version numbers)
- Architecture type (monorepo, single app, fullstack)
**Architecture Diagram:**
Display the Mermaid architecture diagram from the tool output. This gives new developers an instant visual understanding.
**Getting Started:**
1. Prerequisites (runtime, package manager, databases)
2. Clone and install steps
3. Environment setup (.env vars with descriptions)
4. Run the dev server
5. Run tests
**Key Files:**
Table of the most important files and their roles. New developers should read these first.
**API Routes:**
Table of all detected API routes with methods, paths, and source files.
**Database:**
- ORM and migration tool
- Schema file location
- Table overview
- How to run migrations
**Recent Activity:**
Last 10 commits — gives context on what the team is currently working on.
**Gotchas:**
Known issues and common problems new developers encounter.
### Phase 3: Save Onboarding Doc
Save the onboarding guide to `docs/ONBOARDING.md` in the project:
```markdown
# [Project Name] — Developer Onboarding
> Auto-generated by Ultraship on [date]
## Overview
...
## Architecture
```mermaid
[diagram]
```
## Getting Started
...
## Key Files
...
## API Routes
...
## Database
...
## Gotchas
...
```
### Phase 4: Identify Knowledge Gaps
After generating the guide, identify areas that need human input:
- Undocumented environment variables
- Missing README sections
- No contributing guidelines
- No architecture decision records (ADRs)
Suggest creating these if they don't exist.
## Key Principle
**30-minute rule.** A new developer should be able to run the project locally within 30 minutes of reading this guide. If they can't, the guide is incomplete.