GNOST — Codebase Knowledge

GNOST is a lightweight static analysis CLI tool that helps developers understand unfamiliar codebases in minutes.
It automatically detects entry points, maps execution flow, identifies critical files, and generates onboarding documentation and Mermaid diagrams.

It also performs quality analysis (gnost analyze) for maintainability, robustness, observability, and readability to provide a fast quality score and prioritized findings.

Perfect for first-day onboarding, audits, and codebase exploration.

🚀 Why GNOST?

• Quickly build a mental model of a new codebase
• See how execution flows without reading everything
• Generate onboarding docs and Mermaid diagrams with one command

🧠 What GNOST Does

• Detects where execution starts
• Infers high-level execution flow
• Identifies hotspot files (most important code)
• Generates onboarding documentation
• Produces Mermaid flow diagrams
• Runs code quality analysis for maintainability, robustness, observability, and readability

Install

pip install gnost

Run the onboarding scan:

gnost onboard .

Minimal usage examples

gnost summary .
gnost stats .

New in 0.3.0 (Analysis)

gnost analyze .
gnost analyze . --parallel -o
gnost open report

Analysis report preview

Analysis scope

• gnost analyze currently supports Python codebases only.
• JavaScript/TypeScript/Java analysis is planned for future releases.

🌍 Supported Languages

🎯 Who Is This For?

• Developers joining a new team
• Engineers reviewing legacy code
• Startup founders auditing repos
• Tech leads onboarding new hires
• Open-source contributors

📊 Example Use Cases

• First-day onboarding automation
• Codebase documentation generation
• Architecture visualization
• Legacy system analysis
• Rapid technical due diligence

📚 Documentation:

📜 Changelog:

🧩 Philosophy

GNOST prioritizes:

• Fast insights over deep AST complexity
• Practical developer onboarding
• Clear summaries over raw metrics
• Zero-config usage

It is designed to be simple, fast, and immediately useful.

License

MIT License