{"slug": "i-built-an-open-source-tool-that-reverse-engineers-any-github-repo-in-10-seconds", "title": "I built an open-source tool that reverse-engineers any GitHub repo in 10 seconds", "summary": "A developer built CodeAutopsy, an open-source tool that reverse-engineers any GitHub repository in about 10 seconds by cloning the repo, parsing every file into an Abstract Syntax Tree, and tracing all imports and dependencies. The tool uses a dual-endpoint serverless architecture to avoid timeout limits and streams AI analysis results in real time with a partial JSON repair algorithm. It also includes a blast radius feature that highlights all files affected by changes to a specific file, using BFS traversal on the reverse adjacency list of the dependency graph.", "body_md": "You know that feeling when you join a new project or want to contribute to an open-source repo, and you spend the first two days just trying to figure out where everything is?\n\nI did. Every single time.\n\nClone the repo. Open the files. Stare at 47 folders. Wonder which one actually matters. Grep for the entry point. Follow imports down a rabbit hole. Give up and ask someone.\n\nThat's not learning. That's just wasted time.\n\nSo I built CodeAutopsy.\n\nPaste any GitHub URL. That's it.\n\nCodeAutopsy clones the repo, parses every file into an AST (Abstract Syntax Tree), traces every import and dependency, and gives you:\n\nWhat used to take days now takes about 10 seconds.\n\nEvery developer has been here:\n\nCodeAutopsy solves all three.\n\nThe hardest part wasn't the AST parsing — it was keeping it serverless without hitting Vercel's 504 timeout limits, while making the AI analysis feel instant.\n\n**The Serverless Timeout Hack:** Doing AST extraction, building an adjacency list, and waiting for an LLM to generate a massive response in a single API route was a guaranteed timeout crash. I split it into dual endpoints: a fast extractor for the AST graph, and a separate inference engine triggered by the client that pipes a native Web ReadableStream directly back to the frontend.\n\n**Streaming JSON Repair:** The LLM streams back a strict JSON object token by token. Normally you'd wait for the complete JSON before showing anything, leaving the user staring at a blank screen. Instead, I wrote a partial JSON repair algorithm that runs on every incoming chunk. It closes open strings, balances braces and brackets, and tries to parse whatever it has so far. The UI updates in real time as the analysis streams in — you can literally watch the architectural summary build itself word by word.\n\nThis one I'm genuinely proud of.\n\nWhen you click a file, CodeAutopsy does a BFS traversal on the reverse adjacency list of the dependency graph. Every file that imports the file you clicked — directly or transitively — lights up red.\n\nSo if you're about to refactor auth.ts, you instantly see that 14 other files depend on it. You know the blast radius before you write a single line.\n\nI posted on Reddit. Someone in China found it, tweeted it in Chinese, and it got 7,400 views overnight. 59 people bookmarked it. Someone compared it to DeepWiki and said it looked more advanced.\n\nI found out because my GitHub traffic spiked and I went looking for the source. 66 stars. 262 unique cloners in 14 days. All organic.\n\nI'm a CS student. I built this because I was tired of being lost in codebases. Turns out a lot of other developers feel the same way.\n\nFree to use — no credit card, no setup. New users get 3 instant\n\nanalyses, then a free account unlocks 10 per day.\n\nLive App: [codeautopsy-lyart.vercel.app](https://codeautopsy-lyart.vercel.app)\n\nGitHub: [github.com/Sidhant0707/codeautopsy](https://github.com/Sidhant0707/codeautopsy)\n\nWould love feedback — especially on the blast radius algorithm. Currently doing BFS on the reverse adjacency list but I suspect there are smarter approaches for large monorepos. Drop a comment if you have ideas.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-open-source-tool-that-reverse-engineers-any-github-repo-in-10-seconds", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/sidhant0707/i-built-an-open-source-tool-that-reverse-engineers-any-github-repo-in-10-seconds-323c", "published_at": "2026-05-29 00:26:15+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-29 01:11:07.182650+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "ai-products", "generative-ai", "large-language-models", "mlops"], "entities": ["CodeAutopsy", "GitHub", "Vercel", "AST", "LLM"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-open-source-tool-that-reverse-engineers-any-github-repo-in-10-seconds", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-open-source-tool-that-reverse-engineers-any-github-repo-in-10-seconds.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-open-source-tool-that-reverse-engineers-any-github-repo-in-10-seconds.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-an-open-source-tool-that-reverse-engineers-any-github-repo-in-10-seconds.jsonld"}}