Beyond Files and Imports
Understand Anything becomes more revealing when the object being understood changes. This chapter compares its structural, domain, knowledge-base, and Figma modes by asking the same practical question of each: what artifact is being modeled, what evidence supports the relationships, and what can the reader safely do with the result? The point is not to declare one mode superior, but to see how a shared graph contract can support different kinds of understanding without making their evidence interchangeable.
Choose the structural view for system wiring
The structural view is the right starting point when the question concerns how a codebase is assembled. Where does a file sit? Which modules import it? What functions or classes does it contain? Which parsed call relationships connect one area to another? Which configuration, documentation, infrastructure, or schema files touch the application? These are questions about observable organization, and the structural graph is designed to answer them.
Its strength is its explicitness. A file node has a path. A function or class can have a line range. An import, containment, call, deployment, or configuration edge has a particular type and direction. Layers and containers help organize those relationships for a reader. If the task is to locate a likely entry point, trace a dependency, inspect a shared utility, or identify components near a change, this view keeps the reasoning close to the source.
Its limit is equally important. Imports do not explain a business process. A call edge does not establish that the called function is the most important domain decision. A configuration relationship can show that a file affects a component without telling the reader whether the setting is safe, obsolete, or overridden at runtime. The structural graph answers “what is connected?” more reliably than “what does this mean to the business?”
That is not a reason to abandon the structural view when the question is broader. It is a reason to avoid asking it to carry a kind of meaning it was not built to establish. A reader investigating a payment flow may use structural edges to find handlers, services, schemas, and persistence code, but should expect to assemble the business narrative from source and domain-oriented evidence rather than from imports alone.
The distinction becomes concrete during change review. A diff overlay can show that a modified service is connected to several handlers and tests. That is a strong reason to inspect those areas. It does not establish that every connected component will behave differently, nor that an unconnected runtime dependency is harmless. Structural navigation narrows the review surface; it does not simulate execution. The structural lens is therefore strongest when the reader wants a defensible map of where relationships are recorded and weakest when the question depends on intent or runtime state.
Use domain mode for business process questions
The domain mode changes the unit of explanation. Instead of beginning with files and symbols, it models a three-level hierarchy of business domain, business flow, and business step. A domain may represent an area of work. A flow represents a process within it. A step describes an action in sequence, with an entry point and an optional link to the file that implements it. Metadata can record entities, business rules, cross-domain interactions, and the trigger type.
This is a derived view, not a replacement for the structural graph. When a structural graph already exists, the domain skill can use its nodes, edges, layers, and tour as context. When no graph exists, it performs a lighter scan with entry points and sampled source material. In either case, a model proposes the domains and flows from available evidence. The dashboard then renders domain clusters, cross-domain interactions, flows, and ordered steps in a separate view and persists the domain graph separately from the main structural graph.
The distinction is useful because business behavior often crosses technical boundaries.