GitHub Repository

Learn your codebases through self-quizzing and study. Track your knowledge coverage over time.

8 starsPython

Shikhu – Understand the code your agents write

Name: Shikhu – Understand the code your agents write
Availability: InStock
Author: arjunkpatel

by arjunkpatel·Jun 28, 2026·1 point·0 comments

Visit Project View on HN

AI Analysis

●●SolidBig BrainNiche Gem

Knowledge coverage metric tracks how many files you actually understand, not just generated.

Strengths

•Knowledge coverage metric frames learning like test coverage — genuinely clever framing.
•Agent skill integration creates guided walkthroughs from quiz weak spots automatically.
•Per-repo isolation with .quizignore mirrors git workflows developers already know.

Weaknesses

•Requires Inception API key — adds external dependency and potential cost barrier.
•Early stage with 8 stars; quiz quality and learning efficacy remain unproven.

Post Description

Agents write code really well, but it can get hard to understand what they've written and why. Shikhu is a CLI tool and Agent Skill that facilitates learning your code through self-quizzing, transcript analysis, and validation flows.

I'm Arjun, I'm currently a developer advocate at Pinecone, and I use agents to code a lot!

I enjoy using agents to code, but I've been feeling like I've lost some conceptual learning and understanding that comes with writing the code yourself. I wanted to make a tool that would make it easy to re-build habits around learning, while complementing workflows that use agents. I found inspiration for the tool from reading a research paper on skill formation from Anthropic, and Shikhu is the result of my attempt to build a tool around that: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20245

Shikhu focuses on helping develop conceptual understanding via knowledge coverage on a file-level.

Shikhu makes multiple choice quizzes on a file-level for you to take. You can reject a malformed question, answer it, and eventually create validated "golden" question sets for your code. Your ability (or, anyone who you collaborate with) to answer golden questions about your code corresponds to your knowledge coverage. Using the skill, you can learn specific files with your own coding agents, and use those conversations to inform quiz development, to help reinforce learnings.

Repo is here, it's free to use, and requires an Inception API Key for question generation and summarization:https://github.com/arjunpatel7/shikhu

Install Shikhu with uv: uv tool install shikhu

Install the agent skill afterwards:

shikhu init shikhu install-skill

As of writing, the free tier of Inception's pricing should cover typical use.

My article where I explain more about Shikhu is here: https://www.arjunkirtipatel.com/blog/introducing-shikhu

It's definitely rough around the edges, probably will change a lot and maybe has a few bugs, but I found it useful enough to share. Thanks for reading!

-Arjun