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Explore Your Codebase

In this tutorial, you'll use the Ask agent to get cited answers grounded in your actual source code, with exact file paths and line numbers.

Prerequisites

  • Potpie CLI installed and set up (Quickstart)
  • A repository registered as a source (potpie source add repo .)

Steps

1. Ask your question

Type a natural language question about the codebase. Ask handles flow tracing and dependency mapping automatically.

potpie resolve "how does the authentication middleware work?"

Or use the web UI / agent harness chat interface to ask interactively.

2. Review the response

Potpie returns an answer with:

  • File paths relative to the repository root
  • Line references where relevant
  • Structured headers and code snippets

Note

When a question involves a third-party library, Potpie retrieves external documentation via web search automatically.

3. Follow up

Follow-up questions within the same session retain full context. Start broad and narrow down:

> "What does the auth middleware do?"
> "Which routes use it?"
> "What happens if the token is expired?"

Example questions

  • "How does the payment processing flow work end-to-end?"
  • "Where is the user model defined and what are its relationships?"
  • "What would break if I changed the database schema for orders?"
  • "How is error handling done across the API layer?"

What's happening under the hood

Ask classifies your question by type (what, how, where, or why), then:

  1. Searches the knowledge graph via vector similarity
  2. Traverses structural relationships for connected context
  3. Reads source files directly when needed
  4. Assembles a cited answer grounded in real code

Next steps