Cartographer FAQs

Question 1

Does it support visual diagrams?

Accepted Answer

Yes, Cartographer automatically generates Mermaid.js code for system architecture, directory structures, and sequence diagrams directly within the generated documentation.

Question 2

What is the 'Opus orchestrates, Sonnet reads' principle?

Accepted Answer

This is a core efficiency pattern where the more reasoning-capable Opus model plans the mapping strategy, while the faster Sonnet model performs the actual file reading and analysis, providing the best balance of speed and depth.

Question 3

What files does Cartographer modify?

Accepted Answer

It primarily creates or updates docs/CODEBASE_MAP.md and adds a high-level summary to your project's CLAUDE.md file to help Claude understand the project structure better.

Question 4

How does Cartographer handle extremely large repositories?

Accepted Answer

Cartographer uses a parallel subagent strategy where an orchestrator model delegates specific directories to multiple worker models. This allows it to process hundreds of thousands of tokens by breaking the codebase into manageable chunks.

Question 5

Will Cartographer overwrite my manual documentation?

Accepted Answer

Cartographer is designed to create and manage its own docs/CODEBASE_MAP.md file. It includes an update mode that identifies changed files via git or scanners to refresh documentation without losing historical context.

Cartographer

About

Key Features

Use Cases

Cartographer

About

Key Features

Use Cases