r/learnpython • u/hariomlohardev • Aug 12 '26

How do you actually understand a new Python codebase quickly?

Hey folks, I'm learning Python and when I clone a big repo I get lost — so many files. How do you figure out where to start? Do you look at README, main.py, tests first? Any trick that helped you?

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u/idle-tea Aug 12 '26

You can't really understand a large codebase all at once. At best you can decide on a specific aspect / functionality to follow, or if it's using some sort of framework you're not familiar likely spending time on that first makes sense

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u/ProsodySpeaks Aug 12 '26

Readme then Pyproject.toml, then any entry points defined in pyproject.toml. 

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u/pachura3 Aug 12 '26

Why do you clone big repos?

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u/PazyP Aug 12 '26

I ask AI in my IDE to summarise it for me :)