depth-check

Tiered code narration for humans in an AI-first world.

depth-check is a Claude Skill that generates layered explanations of code changes at four expertise levels — making the same work understandable to everyone from stakeholders to senior engineers.

🎥 Built live on stream — Follow the entire build process on Twitch/Ktulue during Software Saturdays.
🧪 First Claude Skill — This is my first custom skill for Claude, built from scratch and documented start to finish.

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The Problem

AI coding tools are optimized to produce code faster. Almost none of them are optimized to help humans understand code better. The few that offer explanations do it one-size-fits-all — a single level of detail regardless of who's reading.

What depth-check Does

Given a code change (diff, commit, PR, or session summary), depth-check generates four tiers of explanation:

Level	Audience	Example
🟢 Green	Stakeholders, PMs, non-technical	"We added a way for users to get notified when an item they want goes on sale."
🔵 Junior	Early-career devs, bootcamp grads	"Created a React component that subscribes to a product's price via a REST API and sends a toast notification when it drops below the user's target."
🟡 Mid	Working developers	"Implemented PriceWatchService with Redis pub/sub for real-time price events, a notification queue with retry logic, and user preference storage via PostgreSQL."
🔴 Senior	Architects, tech leads	"Decoupled price monitoring into an event-driven microservice with fan-out via SNS/SQS, enabling horizontal scaling independent of the product catalog. Chose eventual consistency over strong consistency to keep P99 latency under 200ms."

Same work. Four audiences. Automatically generated.

Use Cases

• Developer Onboarding — New hires understand a codebase at their own level
• Engineering Communication — Auto-generate stakeholder-appropriate summaries of technical work for sprint reviews, board updates, and client changelogs
• Code Review & PRs — Tiered PR summaries help reviewers at different seniority levels understand changes faster
• Education & Bootcamps — Level-appropriate explanations for students at different comprehension levels
• Streaming & Content Creation — Make coding content accessible to mixed-skill audiences
• Compliance & Audit — Document what code does for non-technical auditors in regulated industries

Roadmap

Stage	Description	Status
1. Claude Skill	SKILL.md — Claude reads it and follows narration rules	🚧 In Progress
2. MCP Server	Standalone TypeScript server for any MCP-compatible client	⬜ Planned
3. GitHub Action	Auto-generates tiered PR summaries on every pull request	⬜ Planned
4. API / SaaS	Hosted API with a dashboard for engineering teams	⬜ Future

Stream Schedule

This project is being built live on Twitch/Ktulue as part of Software Saturdays:

1. Architecture & Design — Market research walkthrough, SKILL.md structure, tier design
2. Build the Skill — Implement with Claude Code, test against personal/public repos, iterate live
3. MCP Server — Convert to a standalone TypeScript MCP server, publish to npm
4. GitHub Action — PR integration, publish to GitHub Marketplace

Project Structure

depth-check/
├── SKILL.md          # The Claude Skill definition
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
├── references/       # Supporting docs, tier examples, prompt patterns
└── (future)
    ├── mcp-server/   # TypeScript MCP server (Stage 2)
    └── action/       # GitHub Action (Stage 3)

Usage (Stage 1 — Claude Skill)

Once the SKILL.md is complete, add the skill to your Claude environment and ask Claude to explain any code change:

"Run depth-check on this diff"
"Give me a tiered summary of what we just built"
"Explain this PR at all four levels"

Market Context

The AI coding tools market is projected to exceed $30B by 2032. Every major player (Cursor, Copilot, Devin, Sourcegraph) is focused on making AI produce code faster. Nobody is building the human-readable layer that helps different audiences understand the same work at their level. That's the gap. Full market analysis available in AI_Coding_Landscape_depth-check_Market_Map.md.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

Support

☕ Buy me a coffee on Ko-fi

Author

Ktulue — Twitch · GitHub

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Built with Claude. Streamed live. Explained for everyone.