get_context · repowise docs

The workhorse MCP tool. get_context returns batched context for files, modules or symbols: docs, ownership, freshness, plus optional callers and metrics.

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. The docs come from the generated documentation, and callers, callees and communities from the dependency graph. The other tools are on MCP tools.

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, qualified symbol IDs (e.g. "src/auth/service.py::verify_token"), "component:<name>", "change:<id>" (pr-123 or a commit sha), or "package:<name>". In a workspace, "<alias>:<target>" names the repo. 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", "references", "metrics", "community", "decisions", "skeleton", "skeleton+", "health", "doc_drift", "symbols", "changes", "provenance", "suspects". An unknown key is named in ignored_arguments. No "source" option: this tool returns no source bytes, ever.
`symptom`	string	—	Issue text, an error message or a pasted stack trace for include=["suspects"] to rank against, in place of the words in the target paths.
`compact`	boolean	true	True returns signatures only (lighter). False adds the structure block, docstrings, and imported_by.
`repo`	string	—	Repository alias. Usually omitted: in a workspace, each target routes to the repo that owns it. "all" is not supported.

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` (files that call or reference this exact symbol, ranked by centrality), 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, and one `agent_share` summary with its coverage
`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 records (accepted, with `currency`) under `decisions`, plus `candidates` (proposed, never accepted, up to 3) and `history` (accepted then withdrawn). Default returns titles only; `include=["decisions"]` returns full records
`health`	Code-health score and findings for the target
`doc_drift`	Documents that name this file, where in each, and whether those documents drift themselves. Ask before moving or renaming a file. See Documentation drift
`skeleton`	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

| references | Every edit site of a symbol: definition, import, call and other live occurrence lines, checked against the files on disk, with complete and reasons. When complete is true, it is the whole edit set for a rename | | symbols | Every symbol of a file, not only the top 15 | | skeleton+ | Every line except function bodies, each replaced by a marker with its line range | | changes | On a file target, the newest Change Records that touched it | | provenance | On a file target, its commits by source (agent, human-attested, unknown) with coverage. The agent share is withheld below 30% coverage, and reads {"unavailable": "attribution_off"} when attribution is off | | suspects | One top-level block: changes merged in the last 14 days ranked against the targets' files and the words in their paths, or against symptom when given, at most 5 rows, each with the signals that fired and their evidence. A reading order, never a cause |

An empty callers, callees or used_by comes with a *_basis field saying how much of that language's calls the graph resolved. Read it before concluding nothing calls a symbol. A path::Symbol target with include=["skeleton"] returns its file's skeleton.

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 never silent.

Target kinds beyond files and symbols

Target	Returns
`component:<name>`	The component's declared owner, system, criticality and tags, and `facts` rolled up over its files: health, hotspots, bus factor, test reach and dead code, each with a `basis` (`measured`, `inferred` or `unavailable`). `include=["ownership"]` adds declared teams with their activity over the last 90 days, a count of individual owners, and findings such as `critical_no_active_owner`. No other `include` applies
`change:<id>`	The Change Record: title, forge ref, `merged_at`, category, files and provenance with its coverage. A commit sha the change landed works as the id
`package:<name>`	Where a third-party package is imported (`package:requests`, `package:npm:lodash`): manifest declarations, components and owner teams, and up to 25 import sites with line, `mapping` (`declared` or `inferred`) and `reachability` (`reachable`, `unreachable`, `test` or `unknown`)

Components come from .repowise/components.yaml or catalog-info.yaml, or are derived from the index. Owners are named as teams; individuals are counted.

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"])

# A component, a change and a package in one call
get_context(["component:payments", "change:pr-412", "package:requests"])

# Every edit site before a rename
get_context(["src/auth/service.py::verify_token"], include=["references"])

# Recent changes ranked against a failing file
get_context(["src/payments/retry.py"], include=["suspects"])
get_context(["src/payments/retry.py"], include=["suspects"], symptom="TypeError: amount is None")

# Workspace: name the repo outright
get_context(["web:src/app.ts::App"])

Things worth knowing

Budget: responses fit 24,000 serialized characters, or 32,000 when include is non-empty. 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.
Workspace routing: with repo omitted, a path or path::Name goes to the repo that has the file, and a bare symbol name such as render or Client.send goes to the repo that defines it. An ambiguous target returns candidates. One call can span repos.
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.