Project Insights

Project Insights

Produce an insights report for one project by map-reducing its Claude Code session transcripts. This is the per-project, markdown sibling of the built-in global /insights command. The heavy lifting runs in a bundled Workflow script (insights-workflow.js) that fans out cheap per-session agents, reduces to eight aggregate facets, and returns a rendered markdown string; this skill does the file I/O the Workflow can't (discovering transcripts, writing the report).

Arguments

• [path] — project root to analyze. Default: the current working directory.
• --limit N — number of most-recent sessions to analyze. Default: 40.

Steps

1. Discover the project's session transcripts

Claude Code stores each project's transcripts under ~/.claude/projects/<slug>/ where <slug> is the project's absolute path with every / and . replaced by -. Worktrees of the project get their own sibling directories named <slug>--* (the -- comes from the worktree path's leading /). Include those — they are the same project's work.

A sibling project can share a prefix (e.g. desert-island vs desert-island-alpha-prime), so match the slug exactly or followed by --, never a bare <slug>*.

Determine ROOT (the project root) as an ABSOLUTE path, in this order:

1. The [path] argument, if the user gave one.
2. Otherwise, the session's primary working directory — the first path in your environment context's working-directories list. This is authoritative and immune to shell drift.

Do not default ROOT to the shell's $PWD. The Bash tool's working directory persists across calls and drifts after any cd, so $PWD can point at the wrong project (and git rev-parse --show-toplevel drifts the same way). Always pass an explicit absolute ROOT into the command below; it cds into ROOT itself, so the result does not depend on the current shell directory.

Run this to list the N most-recent transcript paths across the main dir and all worktree dirs (substitute the absolute ROOT you determined):

ROOT="<absolute project root from step above>"; LIMIT="${ARG_LIMIT:-40}"
ROOT="$(cd "$ROOT" 2>/dev/null && pwd)" || { echo "ERROR: ROOT is not a valid directory"; exit 1; }
SLUG="$(printf '%s' "$ROOT" | sed 's/[/.]/-/g')"
PROJDIR="$HOME/.claude/projects"
find "$PROJDIR" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d \( -name "$SLUG" -o -name "$SLUG--*" \) -print0 \
  | xargs -0 -I{} find {} -maxdepth 1 -type f -name '*.jsonl' -printf '%T@\t%p\n' \
  | sort -rn | head -n "$LIMIT" | cut -f2
echo "PROJECT_NAME=$(basename "$ROOT")"

If no paths come back, tell the user no transcripts were found for that project and stop.

2. Decide the output path

• PROJECT_NAME = basename of ROOT (printed above).
• DATE = date +%F.
• If ROOT/.scratchpad/ exists, write to ROOT/.scratchpad/<DATE>-insights-<PROJECT_NAME>.md.
• Otherwise write to ~/.claude/scratchpad/<DATE>-insights-<PROJECT_NAME>.md.

3. Run the Workflow

Invoke the Workflow tool with:

• scriptPath: /home/jsnitsel/.claude/skills/project-insights/insights-workflow.js
• args: a JSON object { "projectName": "<PROJECT_NAME>", "outPath": "<output path from step 2>", "files": [ <the transcript paths from step 1, as a JSON array of strings> ] }

The Workflow runs in the background and notifies on completion. Its result is an object: { projectName, outPath, sessionCount, mappedCount, totals, markdown }.

4. Write the report and summarize

• Write the returned markdown verbatim to outPath.
• Confirm to the user: the output path, sessionCount analyzed (and mappedCount if it differs — the gap is dropped cache-warmup sessions), and a one-line teaser from the report's "At a Glance".
• Offer to open or walk through any section.

Notes & limitations (v1)

• Model: all facet agents use haiku to keep cost low, mirroring the built-in. If the user wants richer prose, bump interaction_style and at_a_glance to sonnet in insights-workflow.js.
• No caching: unlike the built-in (which caches per session_id), this re-analyzes every run. Fine at the default 40-session limit.
• Large transcripts: the map agent samples head/middle/tail rather than the built-in's chunk pre-summarizer. Good enough for facet extraction.
• Global worktrees: worktrees created outside the project root (e.g. under ~/.claude/worktrees/) won't share the project slug and are not included.