Recursive Decomposition Skill
Handle long-context tasks with Claude Code through recursive decomposition
What It Does • Installation • Usage • How It Works • Benchmarks • Acknowledgments
The Problem
When analyzing large codebases, processing many documents, or aggregating information across dozens of files, Claude's context window becomes a bottleneck. As context grows, "context rot" degrades performance:
- Missed details in long documents
- Decreased accuracy on information retrieval
- Hallucinated connections between distant content
- Degraded reasoning over large evidence sets
The Solution
This skill implements Recursive Language Model (RLM) strategies from Zhang, Kraska, and Khattab's 2025 research, enabling Claude Code to handle inputs up to 2 orders of magnitude beyond normal context limits.
Instead of cramming everything into context, Claude learns to:
- Filter — Narrow search space before deep analysis
- Chunk — Partition inputs strategically
- Recurse — Spawn sub-agents for independent segments
- Verify — Re-check answers on smaller, focused windows
- Synthesize — Aggregate results programmatically
What It Does
| Task Type | Without Skill | With Skill |
|---|---|---|
| Analyze 100+ files | Context overflow / degraded results | Systematic coverage via decomposition |
| Multi-document QA | Missed information | Comprehensive extraction |
| Codebase-wide search | Manual iteration | Parallel sub-agent analysis |
| Information aggregation | Incomplete synthesis | Map-reduce pattern |
Real Test Results
We tested on the Anthropic Cookbook (196 files, 356MB):
Task: "Find all Anthropic API calling patterns across the codebase"
Results:
├── Files scanned: 142
├── Files with API calls: 18
├── Patterns identified: 8 distinct patterns
├── Anti-patterns detected: 4
└── Output: Comprehensive report with file:line references
Installation
Via Claude Code Marketplace
# Add the marketplace
claude plugin marketplace add massimodeluisa/recursive-decomposition-skill
# Install the plugin
claude plugin install recursive-decomposition@recursive-decomposition
From Local Clone
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/massimodeluisa/recursive-decomposition-skill.git ~/recursive-decomposition-skill
# Add as local marketplace
claude plugin marketplace add ~/recursive-decomposition-skill
# Install the plugin
claude plugin install recursive-decomposition
Manual Installation (Skills Directory)
# Copy skill directly to Claude's skills directory
cp -r plugins/recursive-decomposition/skills/recursive-decomposition ~/.claude/skills/
After installation, restart Claude Code for the skill to take effect.
Updating
# Update marketplace index
claude plugin marketplace update
# Update the plugin
claude plugin update recursive-decomposition@recursive-decomposition
Usage
The skill activates automatically when you describe tasks involving:
- Large-scale file analysis (
"analyze all files in...") - Multi-document processing (
"aggregate information from...") - Codebase-wide searches (
"find all occurrences across...") - Long-context reasoning (
"summarize these 50 documents...")
Example Prompts
"Analyze error handling patterns across this entire codebase"
"Find all TODO comments in the project and categorize by priority"
"What API endpoints are defined across all route files?"
"Summarize the key decisions from all meeting notes in /docs"
"Find security vulnerabilities across all Python files"
Trigger Phrases
The skill recognizes these patterns:
"analyze all files""process this large document""aggregate information from""search across the codebase"- Tasks involving 10+ files or 50k+ tokens