This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle
Athena is an open-source, local-first Git & AST change-intelligence engine and Model Context Protocol (MCP) server built for the Hacktoberfest 2026 — Side Hustle Challenge. 🛡ï¸
Every developer and engineering team faces the same dread on release day:
I built Athena to turn raw Git history and multi-language syntax trees into structured, mathematically verified change intelligence—without ever sending your code to closed third-party cloud APIs.
🔠AST-Level Breaking Change Detection: Parses Python and TypeScript syntax trees across Git commit ranges to pinpoint removed exports, altered parameter lists (positional, keyword, and defaults), and modified return types.
💥 Caller Blast Radius Mapping: Automatically traverses your repository to find every internal file, caller function, and imported symbol affected by a modified signature.
📚 Documentation Drift Detection: Cross-references modified code symbols against Markdown guides and docstrings to catch stale documentation before shipping.
📠Evidence-Grounded Release Notes: Generates categorized changelogs where every bullet point is linked directly to exact commit hashes and file diffs.
🔌 Universal Model Context Protocol (MCP): Plugs natively into Claude Desktop, Cursor, Zed, or any AI coding assistant via standard JSON-RPC 2.0 stdio tools.
🔒 Offline-First & Privacy-Focused: Runs completely on your local machine using Ollama and open-weight models like qwen2.5-coder:7b. Your proprietary codebase never leaves your computer.
Athena is built for engineering teams, freelancers, and companies building in regulated environments:
The Side Hustle Model: An open-core CLI and MCP server for solo developers, paired with an automated GitHub Action bot ($19/month solo / $79/month team) that audits every Pull Request and posts blast-radius warnings directly in PR reviews.
Athena can inspect any local Git repository (pass . for your current directory, or a path to a project). You can also run python examples/create_demo_repo.py to generate an instant sandbox repo with sample commits, breaking changes, and documentation drift.
python -m athena breaking-changes . --base v1.0.0 --target v2.0.0
Found 1 breaking change requiring human review:
[CRITICAL] calculate_metrics (function)
Location: src/core/calculator.py:42
Change: Non-optional parameter 'weights' was added to public function
Evidence: commit 4a8b21c: "feat: add weights support to metrics calculation"
Suggested SemVer Bump: MAJOR
python -m athena analyze . --base v1.0.0 --target HEAD
Analysis Summary:
• Commits analyzed: 12 commits between v1.0.0 and HEAD
• Files modified: 8 (Python: 5, TypeScript: 2, Markdown: 1)
• AST Symbol changes: 3 modified signatures, 1 deprecated export
• Downstream callers affected: 4 internal callers identified
python -m athena release-notes . --base v1.0.0 --target v2.0.0 --version "v2.0.0"
## âš ï¸ Potential Breaking Changes
- `calculate_metrics`: Parameter `weights` added without a default value in `src/core/calculator.py` ([`4a8b21c`](commit:4a8b21c))
## 🚀 What's Changed
- Added async worker queue execution engine in `src/engine/worker.py` ([`7d9e10f`](commit:7d9e10f))
- Refactored export interfaces in TypeScript client ([`b12c40e`](commit:b12c40e))
## 📚 Documentation Drift
- `docs/api_guide.md` references the old 2-argument signature for `calculate_metrics`
Add Athena to your claude_desktop_config.json or Cursor settings:
{
"mcpServers": {
"athena": {
"command": "python",
"args": ["-m", "athena", "mcp"]
}
}
}
Now your AI editor can directly query Athena for verified blast radiuses and breaking-change assessments before suggesting code edits!
The entire engine is open-source under the MIT license:
athena-mcp)
Local-First, Evidence-Backed Git & AST Release-Readiness and Change-Intelligence MCP Server
Athena is an open-source, local-first Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and developer CLI that delivers verifiable, ground-truth code-change intelligence. By combining deterministic Git diff analysis, Python Abstract Syntax Tree (ast) and TypeScript/JavaScript structural signature comparison, downstream caller blast-radius tracing, and documentation-drift detection, Athena eliminates the hallucination and superficiality of conventional AI release-note generators.
EvidenceRecord items containing the 40-character commit SHA, commit subject, file path, exact base/target line spans, unified diff hunk…/ markers, staticmethods, Windows NTFS stream protection, and TypeScript multiline interfaces)
Athena is engineered around a strict hybrid architecture:
[ Git History & Diff Engine ]
↓
[ Multi-Language AST Parsers (Python + TypeScript) ]
↓
[ Deterministic Verification & Blast Radius Engine ]
↓
[ Ollama Local LLM (qwen2.5-coder:7b) ] (Optional Acceleration)
↓
[ Standard MCP Server / CLI Output ]
Athena uses Ollama with the open-weight qwen2.5-coder:7b model running locally on consumer hardware (tested on an NVIDIA RTX 4050 Laptop GPU with 6GB VRAM). The model synthesizes multi-commit diffs, grouping disparate changes into cohesive business narratives and technical release themes.
LLMs can invent code that does not exist. Athena solves this with a two-tier pipeline:
ast module and TypeScript syntax tokenizers. The breaking-change verdict is For a developer tool like Athena, open innovation is the entire business enabler:
🔒 Client Privacy & Zero NDA Breaches:
Freelancers and agencies handling enterprise code cannot send client intellectual property to OpenAI, Anthropic, or external cloud endpoints without written consent. Running open-weight models locally on the laptop guarantees 100% data sovereignty. Client code never leaves the machine.
💰 Viable Unit Economics for a Side Hustle:
Sending 50,000-line diffs across 20 pull requests a day to proprietary cloud APIs would rack up hundreds of dollars in token bills each month, destroying margin. With open-weight models running on consumer hardware, the marginal cost per audit is $0.00.
âœˆï¸ Offline & Air-Gapped Autonomy:
Developers code on flights, commuter trains, and secure air-gapped corporate intranets. Athena has zero network calls—no telemetry, no internet checks, no cloud dependencies.
🔓 No Vendor Lock-In:
Because Athena is built on open standards (Git, standard ASTs, and the open Model Context Protocol), users can swap the local model from Qwen to Llama 3 or Gemma 2 at will.
To test Athena in a real-world setting, I shared it with a freelance backend developer who maintains a micro-service billing API for a retail client.
The Test:
We ran Athena against an upcoming v2.0.0 refactor branch containing 38 commits.
What Happened:
Athena immediately flagged a CRITICAL breaking change: a helper method format_tax_rate had been changed into a @staticmethod and received a new positional argument without a default value. While the author's new unit tests passed, Athena's Blast Radius tool identified 3 legacy webhook processors in other files that were calling the old 1-argument signature. Merging that PR would have broken live customer invoice generation.
Their Feedback:
"Catching that before the client saw it saved my reputation. In my freelance work, a broken webhook means angry emails and lost retainers. I'd easily pay $29 a month for a tool that automates this across my client repos."
What They Asked for Next:
A native GitHub Action that automatically comments the blast radius report directly on pull requests.
Athena was developed using an AI-assisted engineering methodology, pairing iterative code generation with rigorous verification. You can review and inspect the full architecture, AST visitors, and test suite directly in the open-source repository.
qwen2.5-coder:7b) via Ollama with deterministic AST static analysis to deliver verifiable, private developer tooling.