reveal-cli 0.75.2

How AI agents understand codebases without wasting tokens — local-first, adapter-driven, progressive disclosure enforced by design

Reveal

Reveal is how AI agents understand codebases without wasting tokens.

A local-first, adapter-driven semantic inspection layer — progressive disclosure enforced by design. One CLI, 23 URI adapters, 190+ languages. Structure before content, always. Engineers and AI systems use the same tool, the same syntax, the same progressive drill-down.

reveal src/auth.py validate_token           # What does this function do?
reveal 'calls://src/?target=validate_token' # Who calls it? (cross-file)
reveal overview .                           # one-glance dashboard: quality, activity, deps
reveal 'ast://src/?complexity>10'           # What's too complex?
reveal health ssl://api.example.com domain://example.com ./src  # One-shot health check
reveal pack src/ --since main --budget 8000 # PR context snapshot for AI agents

Installation

pip install reveal-cli

What Makes It Different

Progressive disclosure — the only way in. dir → file → element isn't optional; it's the architecture. You cannot accidentally dump 7,000 tokens of raw code.

reveal src/                          # tree structure (~50-200 tokens)
reveal src/auth.py                   # imports, functions, classes (~200-500 tokens)
reveal src/auth.py validate_token    # exact code (~100-300 tokens)

Local-first. No backend, no API keys, no data leaving the machine. Runs in CI/CD pipelines, air-gapped environments, and anywhere you'd use a Unix tool.

Everything is a URI. ast://, calls://, ssl://, mysql://, markdown://, claude:// — same query operators, same output format, same piping model across all of them.

Cross-file call graph analysis:

reveal 'calls://src/?target=fn&depth=3'    # full impact radius before a refactor
reveal 'calls://src/?rank=callers&top=20'  # most architecturally coupled functions
reveal 'calls://src/?uncalled'             # functions with no callers — rough check, verify results

PR-aware context snapshots for AI agents:

reveal pack src/ --since main --budget 8000   # changed files first, then key dependencies
reveal pack src/ --focus "auth" --budget 6000 # topic-focused snapshot

Composable pipelines:

# nginx config → extract all domains → check each SSL cert
reveal nginx.conf --extract domains | sed 's/^/ssl:\/\//' | reveal --stdin --check

# Find functions that got more complex in this PR
reveal diff://git://main/.:git://HEAD/. --format json | \
  jq '.diff.functions[] | select(.complexity_delta > 5)'

# Batch SSL check from a file of domains
reveal @domains.txt --check

Native MCP server (reveal-mcp) for AI agent integration:

# Install once, works in Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, any MCP-compatible agent
pip install reveal-cli
reveal-mcp  # starts the server
# Five tools: reveal_structure, reveal_element, reveal_query, reveal_pack, reveal_check
# Agents get progressive disclosure and call-graph analysis — no subprocess overhead

Unified health checks across categories:

reveal health ./src ssl://api.example.com domain://example.com mysql://prod
# → code quality + cert expiry + DNS health + DB replication, one exit code

Documentation as a queryable graph:

reveal 'markdown://docs/?aggregate=type'         # taxonomy frequency table
reveal 'markdown://docs/?link-graph'             # bidirectional link analysis + orphan detection
reveal 'markdown://docs/?body-contains=retry&type=procedure'  # full-text + metadata

AI session history as structured data (useful for workflows built on Claude Code):

reveal claude://sessions/                          # list all sessions
reveal 'claude://sessions/?search=validate_token' # cross-session search

What Reveal Does (and Doesn't)

Reveal does	Reveal does not
Inspect / read	Modify / write
Evaluate quality	Auto-fix issues
Package for LLMs	Run LLM inference
Compose workflows	Orchestrate pipelines
Describe itself	Require external config

Subcommands

reveal check src/              # quality check (complexity, maintainability, links)
reveal review main..HEAD       # PR review: diff + check + hotspots, one pass
reveal health ssl://site.com   # health check with exit codes 0/1/2
reveal pack src/ --budget 8000 # token-budgeted snapshot for LLM context
reveal hotspots src/           # top complexity hotspots
reveal overview .              # one-glance dashboard: stats, quality, git activity
reveal deps .                  # dependency health: circular imports, unused, packages
reveal dev new-adapter <name>  # scaffold new adapters/rules

Adapters (22 built-in)

Adapter	What it queries
ast://	Functions, classes, complexity, decorators — 190+ languages
calls://	Cross-file call graph: callers, callees, coupling metrics, dead code
diff://	Structural diff between branches or commits (with per-function complexity delta)
imports://	Dependency graph, circular imports, unused imports
stats://	Codebase quality scores, hotspots, duplication
git://	Commits, blame, branches, tags, function-level history
ssl://	Certificate expiry, chain validation, hostname match
autossl://	cPanel AutoSSL run logs — per-domain TLS outcomes, DCV failures
letsencrypt://	Let's Encrypt certbot live certificates — expiry, multi-domain, renewal status
domain://	DNS, WHOIS, registrar, HTTP redirect chain, email DNS
nginx://	Config parsing, ACL rules, upstream routing, ACME validation
cpanel://	User environment, domains, SSL health, ACL audit
mysql://	Schema, replication status, table analysis
sqlite://	Schema, query analysis
markdown://	Frontmatter, headings, link graphs, full-text search
json://	JMESPath queries, nested navigation, flatten
env://	Environment variable analysis, .env validation
python://	Runtime introspection of live Python modules
xlsx://	Excel data extraction and analysis
claude://	AI session history, tool usage, file access patterns
reveal://	Reveal introspects itself: adapters, rules, config
help://	Built-in documentation, searchable from the CLI

Documentation

• Why Reveal — what makes it powerful
• Quick Start — 5-minute introduction
• MCP Server — native integration with Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf
• CI/CD Recipes — GitHub Actions and GitLab CI ready-to-paste YAML
• Benchmarks — measured 3.9–15x token reduction on real scenarios
• Recipes — task-based workflows
• All Docs — complete documentation index
• AI Agents: reveal --agent-help

License

See LICENSE for details.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.