file-operations

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Analyze files and get detailed metadata including size, line counts, modification times, and content statistics. Use when users request file information, statistics, or analysis without modifying files.

⭐126stars🔀16forks📁View on GitHub🕐Updated Dec 19, 2025
[Files and Documents]

When & Why to Use This Skill

The File Operations skill empowers Claude to perform deep analysis of file systems and metadata. It provides essential tools for retrieving file sizes, line counts, modification timestamps, and content statistics, enabling data-driven insights into codebases and document repositories without modifying the underlying files. This skill is optimized for developers and researchers who need to audit project structures, assess code quality metrics, and manage file-based assets efficiently.

Use Cases

  • Codebase Auditing: Calculate total lines of code, function counts, and class definitions across specific file types to understand project scale and complexity.
  • Technical Debt Identification: Use pattern matching to find and count 'TODO', 'FIXME', or 'HACK' comments across a directory for maintenance planning and code quality checks.
  • Storage Optimization: Identify and list the largest files in a project or directory to manage disk space and optimize file transfers or deployments.
  • File Integrity & Versioning: Retrieve modification times and metadata to compare file versions or verify recent updates during debugging and synchronization tasks.
  • Pattern Discovery: Search for specific imports, library usage, or architectural patterns across multiple files to ensure consistency with project standards.
namefile-operations
descriptionAnalyze files and get detailed metadata including size, line counts, modification times, and content statistics. Use when users request file information, statistics, or analysis without modifying files.

File Operations

Analyze files and retrieve metadata using Claude's native tools without modifying files.

When to Use

  • "analyze [file]"
  • "get file info for [file]"
  • "how many lines in [file]"
  • "compare [file1] and [file2]"
  • "file statistics"

Core Operations

File Size & Metadata

stat -f "%z bytes, modified %Sm" [file_path]  # Single file
ls -lh [directory]                             # Multiple files
du -h [file_path]                              # Human-readable size

Line Counts

wc -l [file_path]                              # Single file
wc -l [file1] [file2]                          # Multiple files
find [dir] -name "*.py" | xargs wc -l          # Directory total

Content Analysis

Use Read to analyze structure, then count functions/classes/imports.

Grep(pattern="^def ", output_mode="count", path="src/")        # Count functions
Grep(pattern="TODO|FIXME", output_mode="content", -n=true)    # Find TODOs
Grep(pattern="^import ", output_mode="count")                 # Count imports

Find Files

Glob(pattern="**/*.py")

Workflow Examples

Comprehensive File Analysis

  1. Get size/mod time: stat -f "%z bytes, modified %Sm" file.py
  2. Count lines: wc -l file.py
  3. Read file: Read(file_path="file.py")
  4. Count functions: Grep(pattern="^def ", output_mode="count")
  5. Count classes: Grep(pattern="^class ", output_mode="count")

Compare File Sizes

  1. Find files: Glob(pattern="src/**/*.py")
  2. Get sizes: ls -lh src/**/*.py
  3. Total size: du -sh src/*.py

Code Quality Metrics

  1. Total lines: find . -name "*.py" | xargs wc -l
  2. Test files: find . -name "test_*.py" | wc -l
  3. TODOs: Grep(pattern="TODO|FIXME|HACK", output_mode="count")

Find Largest Files

find . -type f -not -path "./node_modules/*" -exec du -h {} + | sort -rh | head -20

Best Practices

  • Non-destructive: Use Read/stat/wc, never modify
  • Efficient: Read small files fully, use Grep for large files
  • Context-aware: Compare to project averages, suggest optimizations

Integration

Works with:

  • code-auditor: Comprehensive analysis
  • code-transfer: After identifying large files
  • codebase-documenter: Understanding file purposes