Comments Extraction Skill

Extract comment locations from manifest-owned code lines for analysis by the comment-cleaner agent.

What This Skill Does

• Detects comments inside a tightly scoped change manifest
• Extracts all comments with line numbers and context
• Outputs structured JSON for downstream processing
• Supports multiple programming languages

When to Use

Activate this skill when:

• Preparing manifest-owned comment cleanup operations
• Auditing code documentation coverage
• Analyzing comment patterns in a codebase
• Working with the comment-cleaner agent

Supported Languages

Usage

Extract Comments from a Change Manifest

Use a generated or validated change manifest as the cleanup boundary. This skill extracts comments inside that boundary; it does not decide which files or lines are cleanup-owned.

# Required for comment-cleaner
rp1 agent-tools comment-extract manifest manifest --change-manifest .rp1/work/features/example/change-manifest-001.json --code-root .

Manifest shape:

{
  "version": 1,
  "source": "build",
  "codeRoot": "/absolute/path/to/repo",
  "files": [
    {
      "path": "src/auth.ts",
      "ownedHunks": [{ "startLine": 20, "endLine": 28 }],
      "allowedOperations": ["remove_comments"]
    }
  ]
}

Generated manifests can come from /build, /build-fast, or /code-clean-comments. Build workflows generate manifests from their recorded baseline; standalone cleanup uses rp1 agent-tools change-manifest generate with --source code-clean-comments --scope ... to convert file, directory, git ref, git range, or existing-manifest input into the same manifest shape.

Audit-Only Git Scopes

Git scopes remain available for audit/reporting use. Do not use them as a comment-cleaner cleanup boundary. For cleanup, first generate a change manifest and then extract with --change-manifest.

rp1 agent-tools comment-extract branch main
rp1 agent-tools comment-extract unstaged main
rp1 agent-tools comment-extract "abc123..def456" main --line-scoped

Output Format

{
  "success": true,
  "tool": "comment-extract",
  "data": {
    "scope": "manifest",
    "base": "manifest",
    "filesScanned": 1,
    "linesAdded": 11,
    "lineScoped": true,
    "changeManifest": ".rp1/work/features/example/change-manifest-001.json",
    "comments": [
      {
        "file": "src/auth.py",
        "line": 45,
        "type": "single",
        "content": "# Check if user is active",
        "contextBefore": "def validate_user(user):",
        "contextAfter": "    if user.is_active:"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Output Fields

Error Handling

The tool handles:

• Git command failures (not a repo, invalid branch)
• Missing files (deleted in working tree)
• Binary files (automatically skipped)
• Encoding issues (UTF-8)

Error output format:

{
  "success": false,
  "tool": "comment-extract",
  "data": {
    "scope": "branch",
    "base": "main",
    "filesScanned": 0,
    "linesAdded": 0,
    "comments": []
  },
  "errors": [{ "message": "Not a git repository" }]
}

Integration

This skill is used by the comment-cleaner agent to:

1. Get a manifest-owned list of comments
2. Avoid reading entire files for comment detection
3. Process comments efficiently with context and line/hunk boundaries

The comment-cleaner agent should call this skill through the manifest path it was given. It should not pass branch names, commit ranges, dirty-state labels, or task-builder-authored hunks as cleanup authority.

Limitations

• Does not detect comments inside string literals (best effort)
• Multi-line string docstrings in Python are not extracted (intentional - docstrings are kept)
• Very large files (>10000 lines) are skipped to prevent memory issues
• Manifest cleanup includes multi-line comments only when every comment line is inside owned lines/hunks