Analyze Project

Analyze Project

Understand the structure, dependencies, and symbols of a Swift package or Xcode project.

When to Use

• Starting work on an unfamiliar codebase
• Need to find where something is defined
• Want to understand project dependencies
• Looking for specific symbols, types, or functions

Quick Start

1. Get Project Overview

# For Swift Package Manager projects
cat Package.swift

# List all source files
find Sources -name "*.swift" | head -20

# Count lines of code
find Sources -name "*.swift" | xargs wc -l | tail -1

2. Understand Dependencies

# View resolved dependencies (SPM)
cat Package.resolved | jq '.pins[] | {package: .identity, version: .state.version}'

# Or simpler - just read it
cat Package.resolved

3. Find Symbols and Types

# Find struct/class/enum definitions
grep -rn "^struct \|^class \|^enum \|^protocol \|^actor " Sources/

# Find a specific type
grep -rn "struct MyType" Sources/

# Find function definitions
grep -rn "func " Sources/ | grep -v "^\s*//"

4. Extract Symbol Graph (Advanced)

For complete symbol information with documentation:

# Build first to ensure modules exist
swift build

# Extract symbol graph for a target
swift symbolgraph-extract \
  --module-name YourModuleName \
  --minimum-access-level public \
  --output-dir /tmp/symbols

# Read the symbols
cat /tmp/symbols/YourModuleName.symbols.json | jq '.symbols[] | {name: .names.title, kind: .kind.displayName}'

Common Patterns

Find All Public API

grep -rn "public \|open " Sources/ | grep -E "(func|var|let|class|struct|enum|protocol)"

Find Protocol Conformances

grep -rn ": .*Protocol\|: Codable\|: Hashable\|: Equatable" Sources/

Find TODO/FIXME Comments

grep -rn "TODO\|FIXME\|HACK\|XXX" Sources/

Understand File Organization

# Show directory tree
find Sources -type f -name "*.swift" | sed 's|/[^/]*$||' | sort -u | while read dir; do
  echo "$dir/:"
  ls "$dir"/*.swift 2>/dev/null | xargs -n1 basename
done

For Xcode Projects

# List schemes
xcodebuild -list

# Show build settings
xcodebuild -showBuildSettings -scheme YourScheme 2>/dev/null | grep -E "PRODUCT_NAME|BUNDLE_ID|DEPLOYMENT_TARGET"

# Find the main target's source files
find . -name "*.xcodeproj" -exec cat {}/project.pbxproj \; | grep "\.swift" | head -20

Tips

• Start with Package.swift or the .xcodeproj to understand the project structure
• Use grep -rn to search with line numbers for easy navigation
• The symbol graph gives you the most accurate picture but requires a successful build
• For large projects, focus on the Sources/ directory first

MCP Fallback

If you need structured data or the shell commands aren't sufficient:

• get_project_summary - JSON overview of project
• get_project_symbols - Parsed symbol information
• search_symbols - Fuzzy search across symbols