> if you did /init in a new code base, that Claude would set itself up to maximize its own understanding of the code.

This is definitely not the case, and the reason anthropic doesnt make claude do this is because its quality degrades massively as you use up its context. So the solution is to let users manage the context themselves in order to minimize the amount that is "wasted" on prep work. Context windows have been increasing quite a bit so I suspect that by 2030 this will no longer be an issue for any but the largest codebases, but for now you need to be strategic.