precis

A CLI tool that extracts a token-efficient summary of a path, designed to replace most Explore agent use with a single fast command. It uses tree-sitter to parse source files, extracts structural symbols (functions, types, interfaces, headings), and ranks them by importance to fit within a token budget.

Example

Here's what precis shows for developit/mitt, a tiny TypeScript event emitter, at a 400-token budget:

README.md
     9→# Mitt
    11→> Tiny 200b functional event emitter / pubsub.
    12→
    13→-   **Microscopic:** weighs less than 200 bytes gzipped
    14→-   **Useful:** a wildcard `"*"` event type listens to all events
    15→-   **Familiar:** same names & ideas as [Node's EventEmitter](https://nodejs.org/api/events.html#events_class_eventemitter)
    16→-   **Functional:** methods don't rely on `this`
    17→-   **Great Name:** somehow [mitt](https://npm.im/mitt) wasn't taken
    18→
    19→Mitt was made for the browser, but works in any JavaScript runtime. It has no dependencies and supports IE9+.
    20→
    30→## Install
    56→## Usage
   113→## Examples & Demos
   123→## API

src/index.ts
     1→export type EventType …
     5→export type Handler …
     6→export type WildcardHandler …
    12→export type EventHandlerList …
    13→export type WildCardEventHandlerList …
    18→export type EventHandlerMap …
    23→export interface Emitter …
    27→	on …
    33→	off …
    36→	emit …
    42→ * Mitt: Tiny (~200b) functional event emitter / pubsub.
    43→ * @name mitt
    44→ * @returns {Mitt}
    46→export default function mitt<Events extends Record<EventType, unknown>>(
    47→	all?: EventHandlerMap<Events>
    48→): Emitter<Events> {

test/

The README's h1 section includes body text because top-level headings have the highest priority; at this budget, deeper headings appear without body. The six type aliases are truncated because expanding all six signatures would be expensive relative to the single mitt function. The test directory is deprioritized, appearing as a path only.

Installation

Claude Code plugin (recommended)

The precis plugin automatically injects a structural overview of your project into Claude's context at the start of every session. This eliminates the need for long, manually-maintained CLAUDE.md files describing your codebase, and removes the overhead of Explore agents. The plugin also gives Claude the precis CLI so it can zoom into specific directories on demand.

claude plugin marketplace add Crazytieguy/precis
claude plugin install precis

Or add to your .claude/settings.json manually:

{
  "enabledPlugins": {
    "precis@precis": true
  },
  "extraKnownMarketplaces": {
    "precis": {
      "source": {
        "source": "github",
        "repo": "Crazytieguy/precis"
      }
    }
  }
}

The plugin automatically downloads and updates the binary — no manual install needed.

Standalone CLI

cargo install precis

Or with Homebrew:

brew install Crazytieguy/tap/precis

Or with the install script:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/Crazytieguy/precis/releases/latest/download/precis-installer.sh | sh

Configure your AI agent

Add this to your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, or equivalent:

## Codebase exploration

Always use `precis` for codebase exploration. Run `precis .` for a full overview, or `precis src/some/directory` to zoom into a specific area.

Usage

precis .                    # summarize the current directory
precis ./src                # zoom into a subdirectory
precis . --budget 8000      # with a larger token budget

The default budget is 4000 BPE tokens (o200k_base tokenizer). Output is plain text with line numbers preserving source indentation.

Supported languages

• Rust — functions, structs, enums, traits, impls, type aliases, consts, statics, macros, modules
• TypeScript / JavaScript / TSX — functions, classes, interfaces, enums, type aliases, consts, namespaces
• Go — functions, methods, structs, interfaces, type aliases, consts, vars
• C — functions, structs, unions, enums, typedefs, macros, includes
• Python — functions, classes, module-level constants
• Markdown — heading structure with body content
• JSON / TOML / YAML — top-level keys and sections
• Lua — functions, module-level variables
• Plain text fallback — files in any other language are included as plain text (binary files excluded automatically)