I primarily use AI for understanding codebases myself. My prompt is:

"deeply understand this codebase, clearly noting async/sync nature, entry points and external integration. Once understood prepare for follow up questions from me in a rapid fire pattern, your goal is to keep responses concise and always cite code snippets to ensure responses are factual and not hallucinated. With every response ask me if this particular piece of knowledge should be persistent into codebase.md"

Both the concise and structure nature (code snippets) help me gain knowledge of the entire codebase - as I progressively ask complex questions on the codebase.