vc-scout

Scout

> Output style: Follow process/development-protocols/communication-standards.md — answer-first, plain language, no unexplained jargon, TL;DR on long responses.

Fast, token-efficient codebase scouting using parallel agents to find files needed for tasks.

Arguments

• Default: Scout using local shell search plus optional parallel research-agent delegation (./references/internal-scouting.md)
• ext: Scout using external Gemini/OpenCode CLI tools in parallel (./references/external-scouting.md)

When to Use

• Beginning work on feature spanning multiple directories
• User mentions needing to "find", "locate", or "search for" files
• Starting debugging session requiring file relationships understanding
• User asks about project structure or where functionality lives
• Before changes that might affect multiple codebase parts

Quick Start

1. Analyze user prompt to identify search targets
2. Use a wide range of Grep and Glob patterns to find relevant files and estimate scale of the codebase
3. Use local shell search first, then optionally spawn parallel research-agent workers with divided directories when the search space is large
4. Collect results into concise report

Configuration

Read from .claude/.vc.json (falls back to legacy .claude/.ck.json if present):

• gemini.model - Gemini model (default: gemini-3-flash-preview)

Workflow

1. Analyze Task

• Parse user prompt for search targets
• Identify key directories, patterns, file types, lines of code
• Determine optimal SCALE value of subagents to spawn

2. Divide and Conquer

• Split codebase into logical segments per agent
• Assign each agent specific directories or patterns
• Ensure no overlap, maximize coverage

3. Register Scout Tasks

• Parallel task registration and external orchestration patterns are optional, not required for normal scouting in this repo
• See references/task-management-scouting.md only when you are intentionally coordinating a larger parallel scout workflow

4. Spawn Parallel Agents

Load appropriate reference based on decision tree:

• Internal (Default): references/internal-scouting.md (shell search plus optional research-agent parallelism)
• External: references/external-scouting.md (Gemini/OpenCode)

Notes:

• TaskUpdate each task to in_progress before spawning its agent (skip if Task tools unavailable)
• Prompt detailed instructions for each subagent with exact directories or files it should read
• Remember that each subagent has less than 200K tokens of context window
• Amount of subagents to-be-spawned depends on the current system resources available and amount of files to be scanned
• Each subagent must return a detailed summary report to a main agent

5. Collect Results

• Timeout: 3 minutes per agent (skip non-responders)
• TaskUpdate completed tasks; log timed-out agents in report (skip if Task tools unavailable)
• Aggregate findings into single report
• List unresolved questions at end

Report Format

# Scout Report

## Relevant Files
- `path/to/file.ts` - Brief description
- ...

## Unresolved Questions
- Any gaps in findings

References

• references/internal-scouting.md - Using shell search and optional parallel research-agent work
• references/external-scouting.md - Using Gemini/OpenCode CLI
• references/task-management-scouting.md - Optional task-registration patterns for larger scout coordination