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Practical guides to codebase documentation, onboarding engineers, code quality and keeping docs fresh, with commands and workflows you can run today.
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Guides 11 min read

Code Health: The Complete Guide to Metrics and Scores (2026)

Code health explained: its metrics (complexity, coupling, coverage, churn, ownership), how each is computed, and how they roll up into a 1-to-10 score.

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Guides 9 min read

Code Health Metrics: The 23 Markers Behind a File Score

Code health measures how costly the next change to a file will be. See the 23 markers that score it, how to read a 1 to 10 score, and how to act on it.

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  1. Guides

    The C4 Model Explained: Levels, Diagrams and a Worked Example

    The C4 model describes software at four zoom levels: context, container, component and code. See each C4 diagram, the notation rules and a real example.

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  2. Guides

    Code Churn: What It Is, How to Measure It and What It Predicts

    Code churn is the amount of code added, changed or deleted over time. Measure it with git log --numstat, combine it with complexity, and avoid the common traps.

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  3. Guides

    PR Size: How Big Should a Pull Request Be? Data From 12 Repos

    The median merged pull request is 51 lines. We measured 3,202 merged PRs across 12 public repos, plus the limits Google and SmartBear recommend.

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  4. Guides

    Pull Request Checklist and Template You Can Copy

    A pull request checklist for authors and reviewers, ready-to-paste GitHub and GitLab templates, and the items a bot can check on every PR automatically.

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  5. Guides

    Find Circular Dependencies in a Monorepo (TypeScript, Python, Go)

    Tested commands to find circular dependencies in a monorepo: madge and dependency-cruiser for TypeScript, import-linter and pylint for Python, and Go.

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  6. Guides

    Architecture Diagram Generator for Code: 3 Tools Compared

    Generate an architecture diagram from a GitHub repo with GitDiagram, Eraser or repowise, checked edge by edge against Flask's real import graph.

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  7. Guides

    Generate C4 Diagrams from Code Automatically (and Keep Them Current)

    Five ways to generate C4 diagrams from source code, which C4 levels each can derive, and how to regenerate them on every push so they stop going stale.

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  8. Guides

    How to Learn a New Codebase in Your First Week (Day-by-Day Checklist)

    A five-day plan for learning a new codebase: get it running, trace one request, map modules and owners, ship a small change, then write down what you know.

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  9. Guides

    JavaScript/TypeScript Dependency Graph: 5 Ways to Generate One (Interactive HTML)

    Generate a JavaScript or TypeScript dependency graph with madge, dependency-cruiser, Nx, esbuild or repowise, with the command and output for each.

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  10. Guides

    What Is Codebase Intelligence? Definition, Five Layers and a Tool Map

    Codebase intelligence is a kept-current model of a repository: code graph, git history, docs, decisions and health, queried by people and agents over MCP.

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  11. Guides

    CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md: The Complete Guide

    What CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md are, which one each agent reads, what belongs in them, how to size them, and how to keep them current as the code changes.

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