About pythia-impact
pythia-impact is a workflow skill for developers changing Oracle objects in shared databases. It requires measuring dependencies and existing invalid objects before proposing code changes.
Key features
- 01Measure dependents with pythia impact
- 02Inspect dependencies with pythia deps
- 03Record invalid-object baseline
- 04Escalate large or cross-schema impact
Use cases
- 01Assess effects of changing an Oracle object
- 02Review programs affected by a table alteration
- 03Get approval before a change with broad impact
Install
Copy the command and run it in a terminal.
npx skills add https:/After installing, type/pythia-impactin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.
Details
From the project READMEImpact Before Change
Announce at start: "Using pythia-impact to measure the blast radius first."
Phase: Learn — and the first Ask gate: a large blast radius reaches the developer before any code is written
Changing an Oracle object recompiles or invalidates everything that depends on it — immediately, schema-wide, for every user of a shared database. The cost of knowing first is one command.
The Iron Law
NO CHANGE PROPOSED WITHOUT ITS IMPACT MEASURED FIRST
The Workflow
pythia impact <OBJECT> --depth 2— everything that depends on it, as a tree, ending with the line that matters:-- impact: N dependent objects, M currently VALID.pythia deps <OBJECT> --depth 2— the other direction, what it uses; read it when the change touches calls or table access.pythia invalid— the baseline. Anything already INVALID before the change must not be blamed on the change later; apply compares against this automatically, but you should know the starting state too.
Reading the numbers
| Result | What to do |
|---|---|
| 0 dependents | Say so and proceed; verify after apply anyway. |
| 1–9 dependents | List them to the developer alongside the proposal. |
| 10+ dependents, or any cross-schema dependent | Show the tree and get an explicit go-ahead before writing any code. |
| Dependents already INVALID | Point them out — the area is already unstable. |
Tables deserve the same treatment as code: impact on a table shows every
program that would be invalidated by an ALTER.
Red Flags — STOP if you catch yourself thinking
| Thought | Reality |
|---|---|
| "It's just a small helper" | Helpers are the most-depended-on objects there are. |
| "I'll check impact after writing the code" | Then the number cannot change the design. Too late. |
| "The preview in apply shows impact anyway" | That line is confirmation of a number you already knew — not discovery. |
| "It's a new object, nothing depends on it" | True — say that, with impact output as evidence, not as an assumption. |
Hand-off
Impact known and acceptable → pythia-write to write the change following
the codebase's conventions → pythia-apply to land it with preview and
verification.