deepwiki-cli Skill

deepwiki-cli provides AI-generated wiki documentation for GitHub repositories. Use the deepwiki-cli to query it directly — this keeps only the result text in Claude's context, avoiding MCP protocol overhead.

When This Skill Activates

• User references a GitHub repository by name (owner/repo format)
• User asks how a library or framework works
• User needs to understand a codebase they haven't read locally
• User asks architecture or API questions about an open-source project

How to Use

Run via Bash tool:

# Ask a question about a repository
deepwiki-cli ask <owner/repo> "<question>"

# List wiki topics for a repository
deepwiki-cli structure <owner/repo>

# Read full wiki contents
deepwiki-cli read <owner/repo>

Examples

deepwiki-cli ask facebook/react "How does the reconciler work?"
deepwiki-cli ask vercel/next.js "What is the App Router architecture?"
deepwiki-cli structure rust-lang/rust
deepwiki-cli read tokio-rs/tokio

Prerequisites

The deepwiki-cli binary must be installed:

cargo install deepwiki-cli

If the binary is not found, inform the user to install it first.

When NOT to Use

• Repository is already cloned locally — use Glob/Grep/Read tools directly
• Repository is private — deepwiki-cli only works with public repositories
• User is asking about their own code in the current working directory

Error Handling

If deepwiki-cli is not installed or a command fails:

1. Check if the binary exists: which deepwiki-cli
2. If not found, tell the user to install: cargo install deepwiki-cli
3. If the repository is not found, verify the owner/repo format
4. If the command times out, try deepwiki-cli structure first (lighter query), then ask specific questions
5. As a last resort, fall back to web search for the repository's documentation

Why This Saves Tokens

Using the CLI via Bash outputs only the result text to Claude's context. Connecting deepwiki-cli as an MCP server adds initialize handshake + tool listing overhead on every session start.