Wire ripwire into an agent as an MCP server — `ripwire wrap AGENT` (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini…) — and choose the server verb mid-task. Also tool HEALTH: a symbol you expected is missing from the ranked output, the index feels stale after a rebase,…
You have a SYMPTOM — crash, exception, wrong output, failing test, error string — and don't know which code is responsible. Ranks candidates; a stack trace or sanitizer output maps onto frames innermost-first; 'it worked yesterday' / 'my last edit broke it' →…
Maintenance risk in code you did NOT write — inheriting a module, planning a refactor, a suspected god object, 'what's gnarly / where's the rot / safe to touch?': hotspots, dead or inactive code, switches/defaults (--flags), clones, a function's real shape,…
You can NAME the symbol: who calls it, what it calls, the path from A to B, its full body, or an exact literal/regex match. 'Safe to change or rename X — what breaks downstream?' = the transitive blast radius, not 1-hop callers. Three or more symbols →…
Landing COLD in an unfamiliar repo or subsystem, or about to open several files for one question: map first, read only what it ranks highest — main subsystems, entry points, 'how does X work / where is Y'. Also recover context after compaction, retrieve saved…
Security review: (1) vet an untrusted SKILL.md or .mcp.json BEFORE installing it — the injection/exfiltration scanner; CRITICAL blocks the install; (2) audit code on an untrusted-input path (a deserializer, parser, exec of user data, network endpoint): taint…
Merge-SAFETY of an existing diff — yours before you push, or a PR you review: blast radius, tests to run, a broken contract (--edit-check=SYM), branch conflicts and landing order, unmerged work stranded on old branches, which ref defines it. Code QUALITY →…
Start HERE when unsure which ripwire skill fits, or asked 'how do I use ripwire / where do I start'. A moment→skill map, cold start to handoff, plus the two reflexes that leak most: --exemplar before you write, --quality-delta before you call it done. One hop…