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  • I created a side project ~3 years ago based on a similar idea. It was before LLMs were a big thing, and AI could render the code relationships for you.

    I started with go and java (the two languages I was using in my job) and built AST parsers that would extract the relationships between the classes and functions and draw them with graphviz. Then I created a filter syntax based on regex to filter the graphs.

    I never followed through on the idea to a production ready version, but it helped massively as a personal tool when working on unfamiliar codebases.

    The site is still here, but lots of it is probably broken by now..

    https://packagemap.co

    by zknill
  • Well, interesting idea, but can you trust that it generates it properly? Because if it doesn't, then your understanding of the code will be incorrect, even worse than lack of knowledge; and if you do need to check all the things it has generated for you, as a description - doesn't it defeat the purpose of the tool?
    by BinaryIgor
  • (coauthor) happy to take any questions! see 1 min demo video here https://x.com/cognition/status/1985755284527010167

    this is brainchild of cognition cto steven who doesn't like the spotlight but he deserves it for this one https://x.com/stevenkplus1/status/1985767277376241827

    if you leave qtns here he'll see it

    by swyx
  • this is the right way to try and tackle this problem imo. too much focus in AI dev tooling has been on building "products" that only half work.

    making codebases understandable to humans, and LLMs etc, is a better approach

    self documenting, interpretable systems would actually solve a lot of dev churn in big companies

    plus it's not like artifacts have to be limited to code once that's figured out

    by ChrisbyMe
  • A feature like this isn't useful because knowing what connects to what, dependencies, etc. means nothing without business context. AI will never know the why behind the architecture, it will only take it at face value. I think technical design docs which have some context and reading the code is more than enough. This sits in the middle ground where it lacks the context of a doc and is less detailed than the code.
    by asdev
  • I really think more people should give Windsurf a go. It's really good. I'm a senior engineer and do a mix of agentic and regular coding and I really think people are looking past Windsurf.

    As the conversation shifted towards Cursor vs Claude code vs Codex people seem to have stopped mentioning it which is a shame.

    Source: user for 12 months - not a shill.

    Codemaps was a very pleasant surprise when it showed up.

    by bluelightning2k
  • Sounds very cool.

    I wanted to try this out, so I opened Windsurf for the first time in ages and clicked the "Upgrade Available" button, which sent me to: https://windsurf.com/editor/update-linux

      Did you install using apt or apt-get? If so...
  
  1. Update package lists
  
  sudo apt-get update
  
  2. Upgrade Windsurf
  
  sudo apt-get upgrade windsurf
    Whle `apt-get upgrade windsurf` will technically upgrade Windsurf, instructing users to run a command that will attempt to upgrade all packages on their system is nuts when the command is provided in a context that strongly implies it will only upgrade Windsurf and has no warnings or footnotes to the contrary. Good thing I didn't ask Windsurf's agent to ugprade itself for me, I guess.

    EDIT - I don't want to detract from the topic at hand, however - after upgrading (with `sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade windsurf` :)) and playing around a bit, the Codemaps feature indeed seems very nifty and worth checking out. Good job!

    by apstls
  • A few things to point out after reading and thinking about this:

    - Another AI firm building products focused on Fortune 500 scale problems. If you're not at a F500, this tool isn't necessarily a good fit for you, so YMMV.

    - static analysis tools that produce flowcharts and diagrams like this have existed since antiquity, and I'm not seeing any new real innovation other than "letting the LLM produce it".

    They say it's ZDR, so maybe I don't fully understand what problem they're trying to solve, but in general I don't see the value add for a system like this. Also onboarding isn't necessarily just presenting flow charts and diagrams: one of the biggest things you can do to onboard somebody is level-set and provide them with problem context. You COULD go into a 30 minute diatribe about how "this is the X service, which talks to the Y service, and ..." and cover a whiteboard in a sprawling design diagram, or you could just explain to them "this is the problem we're working on", using simple, compact analogies where/when applicable. If the codebase is primarily boilerplate patterns, like CRUD, MVC, or Router/Controller/Service/DB, why talk about them? Focus on the deviant patterns your team uses. Focus on the constraints your team faces, and how you take the unbeaten path to navigate those constraints.

    by gnarlouse

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