Show HN: Onboard-CLI, a LLM powered and AST-based tool to visualize codebase
Onboard-CLI is an open-source, LLM-powered command-line tool that uses AST analysis to help developers visualize and understand codebases, aiming to simplify navigation and onboarding for complex projects.
Background
- The linked GitHub repo is for a command-line tool called Onboard-CLI that helps developers understand unfamiliar codebases by generating interactive visualizations (dependency graphs, architecture diagrams) from source code.
- It combines two technical approaches: (1) **AST (Abstract Syntax Tree)** analysis, which parses code into a structural tree to understand relationships between functions, classes, and files accurately, and (2) **LLMs (Large Language Models)** to add natural-language explanations and summarization of what each component does.
- The target audience is developers (especially those new to a project or joining a team) who need to quickly grasp a complex codebase without reading every file. Similar existing tools include dependency analyzers (e.g., Doxygen, Graphviz-based tools) but Onboard-CLI aims to be more interactive and AI-augmented.
- This was posted to Hacker News as "Show HN", indicating it is a project the author built themselves and is showing to the community for feedback.