explain-repo

explain-repo statically analyzes a local or remote Python repository and produces a guided onboarding report. It parses Python with the standard-library ast module, resolves internal imports, builds a NetworkX dependency graph, and ranks files without reading meaning into source text.

Installation

Run the published package without installing it globally:

uvx explain-repo ./path/to/repository
uvx explain-repo https://github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY.git

For local development:

git clone <repository-url>
cd explain-repo
uv sync
uv run pytest
uvx --from . explain-repo ./path/to/repository

Python 3.11 or newer is required.

Usage

The CLI accepts either a local directory or a Git repository URL. Remote repositories are cloned into a temporary directory, analyzed, and automatically deleted afterward. The original repository is not modified.

Analyze a public GitHub repository without cloning it manually:

uvx explain-repo https://github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY.git

Use --ref to analyze a branch, tag, or commit:

uvx explain-repo https://github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY.git --ref develop
uvx explain-repo https://github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY.git --ref v1.2.0
uvx explain-repo https://github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY.git --ref a1b2c3d

HTTPS and SSH Git URLs are supported. Private repositories work when your local Git installation already has access through SSH keys or a credential helper. The --ref option applies only to URL sources; local directories are analyzed as they currently exist on disk.

explain-repo [OPTIONS] SOURCE

Examples:

uvx explain-repo . --top 5
uvx explain-repo https://github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY.git --top 5
uvx explain-repo . --rank-method indegree
uvx explain-repo . --json > report.json
uvx explain-repo . --llm

Sample terminal output:

Suggested Reading Order
┏━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ # ┃ File               ┃ Why central               ┃ Dependencies     ┃
┡━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1 │ src/app/core.py    │ imported by 12 other files │ src/app/types.py │
│ 2 │ src/app/service.py │ imported by 4 other files  │ src/app/core.py  │
└───┴────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┴──────────────────┘

Core Abstractions
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ File               ┃ Classes              ┃ Functions        ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ src/app/core.py    │ Repository (load)    │ create_app       │
│ src/app/service.py │ AnalysisService (run)│ analyze          │
└────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────┘

Syntax-invalid files are skipped with a warning. Common generated directories, including .git, .venv, venv, node_modules, __pycache__, build, and dist, are excluded from scanning. Circular imports are represented as ordinary cycles in the graph and require no recursive traversal.

Optional LLM descriptions

LLM descriptions use only the file path and extracted imports, function names, class names, and method names. Full source content is never sent.

Ollama (free and local)

Ollama is the default provider in explain-repo 0.2.0 and newer. It runs on your computer, requires no API key, and has no per-request charge.

1. Install Ollama. On Linux:

   curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
   

   For macOS or Windows, use the installer from ollama.com/download.

2. Confirm the installation:

   ollama --version
   

3. Download the default model (approximately 2 GB):

   ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:3b
   ollama list
   

4. Start the local server if the installer did not start it automatically:

   ollama serve
   

   Keep that terminal open. A message that port 11434 is already in use usually means Ollama is already running.

5. From another terminal, test the current source checkout:

   cd /home/alintm4/Desktop/read-repo
   uvx --from . explain-repo /path/to/repository --top 3 --llm
   

6. After 0.2.0 is published to PyPI, run it from anywhere:

   uvx --refresh --from explain-repo==0.2.0 explain-repo /path/to/repository --top 3 --llm
   

Each top-ranked file causes one local model request. Use a small --top value for faster reports on machines with limited memory.

To select another installed model, set EXPLAIN_REPO_OLLAMA_MODEL:

EXPLAIN_REPO_OLLAMA_MODEL=qwen2.5-coder:7b uvx explain-repo . --llm

To connect to Ollama on another machine, set the server URL:

EXPLAIN_REPO_OLLAMA_URL=http://hostname:11434 uvx explain-repo . --llm

If the command reports that it cannot connect:

ollama serve
curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags

If it reports that the model is missing, run:

ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:3b

No API key or paid account is required, and extracted structure stays on your computer.

Anthropic

Anthropic remains available as an optional hosted provider. Install the llm extra and provide credentials in the environment:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="..."
uv sync --extra llm
uv run explain-repo . --llm --llm-provider anthropic

Override the default Anthropic model with EXPLAIN_REPO_ANTHROPIC_MODEL.

Publishing to PyPI

The distribution name, Python requirement, runtime dependencies, build backend, and [project.scripts] entry point are defined in pyproject.toml. The script entry is what lets uvx install the distribution and invoke explain-repo.

1. Choose the next semantic version and update both project.version in pyproject.toml and __version__ in src/explain_repo/__init__.py.
2. Run uv lock, uv sync, uv run pytest, and uvx --from . explain-repo ..
3. Build clean wheel and source distributions with uv build.
4. Check the release files with uvx twine check dist/*.
5. Create a PyPI trusted publisher for the repository's release workflow, or create a scoped PyPI API token.
6. Publish interactively with uv publish; when prompted for token credentials, use __token__ as the username and the PyPI token as the password. In CI, prefer PyPI trusted publishing instead of storing a long-lived token.
7. Verify the published release with uvx --refresh --from explain-repo==<version> explain-repo --help.

PyPI makes the distribution globally discoverable. Before publication, uvx --from . explain-repo PATH is the correct local equivalent.