{"slug": "show-hn-automatically-keep-track-of-all-features-implemented-in-a-project", "title": "Show HN: Automatically keep track of all features implemented in a project", "summary": "A developer released Feature Ledger, a command-line tool that automatically tracks features implemented in a software project by storing JSON descriptions in a .ledger directory. The tool offers commands including ledger init, ledger bootstrap (which prints a prompt for a coding agent to analyze a codebase), ledger audit, ledger release cut, and ledger build, which generates a client PDF, FEATURES.md, and FEATURES_EXTENDED.md. The project was posted to Hacker News as a Show HN with 1 point and 0 comments.", "body_md": "I built this because I wanted to automate my least favourite part of documentation writing - expressing at a high level what was implemented. There are a couple of situations where you could need that: - to show to the client what changed since the last update - to show to an executive, where the fucus went lately - to explain to a new team member, what the project is about\n\nBecause the report (you can see how it looks here: [https://github.com/netizer/feature-ledger/blob/main/docs/cli...](https://github.com/netizer/feature-ledger/blob/main/docs/client/feature-ledger-Feature-Ledger_2.pdf)) is automated, I also use it as a discovery tool in projects I just started working on.\n\nThe way it works: - `ledger init` - creates a `.ledger` directory; descriptions of all new features will be stored there - `ledger bootstrap` - prints out a prompt to be used in a coding agent; it will analyse a new codebase and create the JSON files describing all features - `ledger audit` - when you usa a coding agent it will automatically keep the feature list up-to-date, audit is to discover features implemented without a coding agent - `ledger release cut --name \"Release name\" --date 2026-09-11` - run it after you've just shown to the client what had changed and you want to start working on a new set of features; in the new ledger you will see new features in green, updated features with blue, and deleted ones in red - `ledger build` - run it whenever you want to see the report of new features; there are 3 files generated based on JSON files describing features: a PDF for the client, FEATURES.md (the same but in an MD format), FEATURES_EXTENDED.md (the same but including implementation details - this is for the dev team)\n\nComments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654287)\n\nPoints: 1\n\n# Comments: 0", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-automatically-keep-track-of-all-features-implemented-in-a-project", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/netizer/feature-ledger", "published_at": "2026-09-11 06:33:11+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-11 06:57:13.678921+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "developer-tools", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Feature Ledger", "Hacker News", "GitHub"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-automatically-keep-track-of-all-features-implemented-in-a-project", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-automatically-keep-track-of-all-features-implemented-in-a-project.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-automatically-keep-track-of-all-features-implemented-in-a-project.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-automatically-keep-track-of-all-features-implemented-in-a-project.jsonld"}}