Smart Explore

Smart Explore is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by thedotmack in claude-mem.

90.6K stars7.9K forkson thedotmack/claude-memAdded 2026/08/13Repository updated 2026/08/13

aiai-agentsai-memoryanthropicartificial-intelligencechromadbclaudeclaude-agent-sdkclaude-agentsclaude-codeclaude-code-pluginclaude-skillsembeddingslong-term-memorymem0memory-engineopenmemoryragsqlitesupermemory

Install in seconds

Install Smart Explore

Copy Smart Explore into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem/tree/main/plugin/skills/smart-explore ~/.claude/skills/smart-explore

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: plugin/skills/smart-explore/SKILL.md in thedotmack/claude-mem
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/smart-explore
Collection: One of 22 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What Smart Explore does

Smart Explore performs token-optimized structural code search using tree-sitter AST parsing, allowing agents to understand code structure, find functions, and explore codebases without reading full files.

Smart Explore is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Smart Explore comes from a repository tagged ai, ai-agents, ai-memory, anthropic and artificial-intelligence.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Smart Explore

Structural code exploration using AST parsing. This skill overrides your default exploration behavior. While this skill is active, use smart_search/smart_outline/smart_unfold as your primary tools instead of Read, Grep, and Glob.

Core principle: Index first, fetch on demand. Give yourself a map of the code before loading implementation details. The question before every file read should be: "do I need to see all of this, or can I get a structural overview first?" The answer is almost always: get the map.

Your Next Tool Call

This skill only loads instructions. You must call the MCP tools yourself. Your next action should be one of:

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Smart Explore

What else does thedotmack publish alongside Smart Explore?
Smart Explore is one of 22 skills that DirSkills catalogs from thedotmack/claude-mem, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Babysit PR, Cloud Sync and Design Is. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Smart Explore does, and is maintained by thedotmack in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the thedotmack/claude-mem page.
How does Smart Explore compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Smart Explore ranks #44 by stars among the 2451 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Smart Explore against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.