search-before-edit

What problem does it solve?

Modifying code without understanding its full context often leads to introducing new bugs, breaking existing functionality, or creating inconsistent patterns. This Skill enforces a mandatory "search before edit" protocol, ensuring all code changes are well-informed, safe, and align with the existing codebase, saving significant debugging time.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Mandatory Pre-Edit Search Protocol: Requires comprehensive searching for existing patterns, usages, and related code before any modification, creation, or deletion of code.
• Multi-Strategy Search Guidance: Advises on using multiple query wordings, semantic-first approaches, and file type filters for thorough investigation, preventing missed dependencies.
• Minimum Search Requirements: Defines specific search thresholds for different operations (new file, modify, delete, rename) to ensure due diligence and prevent oversight.
• Use Case: You need to rename a core function. Instead of just changing the name and hoping for the best, use this Skill to automatically perform a series of grep searches across the entire codebase, identifying all call sites, imports, and tests that need updating, preventing runtime errors and ensuring a smooth refactor.

Quick Start

I need to rename the 'getUserById' function. What should I search for before I make the change?