Comment by mc7alazoun
3 days ago
I've been in a similar position; where I was tasked to refactor a messy LARGE codebase that was created by a bunch of different previous team members. Here's what I would recommend: - If your codebase contains sensitive or IP related code make sure to remove that before interacting with your AI assistant of choice - Upload the repo/codebase to Claude Code (or codex or whatever you prefer); and ask it to analyse it: the good, the bad and the ugly - Based on the analysis ask the AI assistant to create an .md file with all recommendations/optimisations required to improve code (make sure to have all relevant tests included in the refactoring loop) - Note the before outcomes/outputs; do the refactoring using Claude Code again or whatever tool you prefer; then check after outcomes/outputs to make sure nothing did break
Usually it's an iterative process; if done correctly you could end up with a much better codebase. Good luck!
Do you recall how much it cost to review your code base? I worry it's going to be hundreds of dollars just for it to review the thousands of files, let alone organize it all and create suggestions.
Not thousands of files in my cases .. The Claude 5x Max plan was enough! I'd suggest splitting your code review into reasonable sized chunks .. don't try to do it all at once.