get_context — repowise docs

The workhorse tool. Compact, batched context for any set of files, modules, or symbols: docs, ownership, freshness, and optional callers/callees/metrics/community in one call.

If your agent only learns one tool, make it this one. get_context absorbs what would otherwise be five or six separate calls (file docs, symbol signatures, ownership, last-change history, callers and callees, centrality metrics, community membership, and freshness) into a single call with a configurable include list. Pass multiple targets at once.

This is not a source-body tool. There is no include=["source"]: the triage card returns signatures, not bodies. For a whole file, ask for it in one call with include=["skeleton"] (body-elided, every signature, the most central symbols in full), or just Read it. Reach for get_symbol for a single body a response already named, never per signature in a loop.

When to call

After get_answer to verify or expand on cited files.
Before editing any file: check ownership, dependents, freshness, and governing decisions.
Architectural questions: pair with include=["metrics", "community"] to see centrality and cluster membership.
Always batch: one call with five targets is far cheaper than five calls with one target each.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`targets`required	string[]	—	File paths, module paths, or qualified symbol IDs (e.g. "src/auth/service.py::verify_token"). Pass as many as you need.
`include`	string[]	["docs", "freshness"]	Blocks to include, on top of the always-on "docs" and "freshness". Options: "full_doc", "ownership", "last_change", "callers", "callees", "metrics", "community", "decisions", "skeleton" (file targets only). No "source" option: this tool returns no source bytes, ever.
`compact`	boolean	true	True returns signatures only (lighter). False adds the structure block, docstrings, and imported_by.
`repo`	string	—	Repository alias. Usually omitted.

Returns

The response is a targets map keyed by the target string. Each entry contains:

Block	What it gives you
`docs`	Wiki title, summary, and symbols list (name, kind, signature, line, docstring). Adds structure block and `imported_by` for files; child file pages for modules; `qualified_name`, `used_by`, candidate matches for symbols
`full_doc`	Same as `docs` but with the full page content_md
`ownership`	`primary_owner`, `owner_pct`, `contributor_count`, `bus_factor`, plus `recent_owner` if the active maintainer differs from the historical primary
`last_change`	ISO date, author, days ago
`callers` / `callees`	For a symbol target: up to 50 each, filtered to confidence ≥ 0.7. Each entry: `symbol_id`, `name`, `kind`, `file`, `line`, `confidence`, `edge_type`. For a file target: a rolled-up view instead, capped at 20, with a different shape: `{file, imports?, inbound_calls?}` (`imports: true` when that file imports this one, `inbound_calls` counting cross-file call edges into any symbol this file defines)
`metrics`	`pagerank`, `pagerank_percentile`, `betweenness`, `betweenness_percentile`, `in_degree`, `out_degree`, `community_id`, `community_label`
`community`	`id`, `label`, `cohesion`, `top_members`, `neighbors` with cross-edge counts
`freshness`	`confidence_score`, `freshness_status`, `is_stale`
`hotspot`	Always on. `true` when the target is a churn hotspot; a cue to follow up with `get_risk`
`fix_history`	Always on, appears only on files with counted bug fixes: `count`, age, and a `bug_magnet` flag
`episodes`	Always on. Count of dated episode records bound to this target
`decisions`	Governing architectural decision records (if any); default returns titles only, `include=["decisions"]` returns full records
`skeleton`	(file targets) The file with bodies elided: every signature, the import preamble, and the bodies of only the most central symbols (ranked by symbol PageRank / hotspot / query match), token-budgeted. Typically ~15% of the full file's tokens. Elision markers carry 1-indexed line ranges so anything can be range-read back

Top-level fields:

truncated: true if output was capped at the token budget.
dropped_targets, dropped_symbols: what got evicted when the budget was exceeded.
_meta.omitted: when anything was dropped, the refs to get it back: { refs, tokens, restore }. Resolve with repowise expand <ref> from a shell or get_symbol("repowise#<ref>") from any MCP client; truncation is no longer silent.

Example

get_context(["src/auth/service.py"])

get_context(
    ["src/auth/service.py::verify_token"],
    include=["callers"],
)

get_context(
    ["src/auth/", "src/payments/"],
    include=["ownership", "metrics", "community"],
)

# Structure-level view of a large file at ~15% of the tokens
get_context(["src/big_module.py"], include=["skeleton"])

Things worth knowing

Token budget enforcement: ~8000 tokens (~32k chars) global cap. Truncation happens in stages: (1) strip heavy doc fields, (1.5) strip skeleton texts, largest first, (2) shrink symbol lists keeping query-matched symbols first, (3) drop whole targets. Largest targets are evicted first.
Symbol prioritisation: within a target, symbols are ranked by exact name match → substring match → kind (class > function > method) → centrality. Navigationally important symbols survive truncation.
Target resolution order: file_page → module_page → symbol (exact then fuzzy) → file by target_path. If none match, returns fuzzy path suggestions.
freshness is included by default: critical for the agent to detect stale indices. ownership and last_change add 200 to 500 bytes each; omit them on multi-turn sessions to save the cache.
Cross-repo enrichment (workspace mode): appends co-change partners and contract links (HTTP routes, gRPC services, topics) from other repos for files in a multi-repo workspace.

Pattern that works well: call get_answer first, then get_context(targets=fallback_targets, include=["ownership", "last_change"]) on whatever the answer cited. Two calls, complete picture.