slopsniff 0.1.0

A lightweight CLI for catching slop in modern codebases before it hardens into tech debt.

slopsniff

A lightweight CLI for catching "slop" in modern codebases before it hardens into team-wide tech debt.

SlopSniff is not trying to detect whether code was written by AI. It is trying to detect the kinds of patterns that show up when teams move too fast, overgenerate code, or skip the cleanup pass — giant files, copy-pasted functions, versioned helper sprawl, and everything else that quietly becomes the norm.

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Install

pip install slopsniff

Or with uv:

uv add slopsniff

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Usage

# Scan current directory
slopsniff .

# Scan a specific path
slopsniff ./src

# Set a custom CI fail threshold (default: 20)
slopsniff . --fail-threshold 30

# JSON output for machines and CI pipelines
slopsniff . --format json

# Show score contribution per finding
slopsniff . --verbose

# Override thresholds on the fly
slopsniff . --max-file-lines 300 --max-function-lines 40

All flags

Flag	Short	Default	Description
path		.	Directory to scan
--fail-threshold	-t	20	Score at which CI returns exit code 1
--format	-f	terminal	Output format: terminal or json
--verbose	-v	off	Show score per finding
--max-file-lines		400	Override file line warning threshold
--max-function-lines		50	Override function line warning threshold

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Example output

SlopSniff Report
========================================
Files scanned:  42
Total score:    18
Status:         WARNING

[HIGH] duplicate-functions
  src/utils/formatters.py:12-44
  Duplicate function body found in 2 locations: src/utils/formatters.py:12-44, src/services/formatters.py:8-40

[MEDIUM] large-function
  src/api/upload.py:77-156
  Function 'process_upload' is 79 lines long (warning threshold: 50)

[LOW] large-file
  src/helpers/common.py
  File is 438 lines long (warning threshold: 400)

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Scoring

Each finding contributes to a total slop score.

Severity	Score
high	10
medium	5
low	2

Score range	Status
0–9	healthy
10–19	warning
20+	fail (non-zero exit)

The fail threshold is configurable via --fail-threshold.

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Rules

large-file

Flags files that exceed configurable line count thresholds.

• medium at 400+ lines
• high at 800+ lines

large-function

Flags functions that exceed configurable line count thresholds. Uses Python's ast module for accurate line spans in .py files, and brace-depth heuristics for JS/TS/Vue.

• medium at 50+ lines
• high at 100+ lines

duplicate-functions

Normalizes and hashes function bodies, then flags exact duplicates found across or within files. Functions under 5 lines are ignored to reduce noise from trivial patterns like empty __init__ methods.

• high for any exact body match across 2+ locations

helper-sprawl

Flags two categories of low-cohesion patterns:

1. Generic filenames — files named utils.py, helpers.py, common.py, shared.py, misc.py, etc.
2. Versioned function names — clusters of functions sharing a base name with variant suffixes like _v2, _old, _safe, _legacy, _copy, _temp

• low for generic filenames
• medium for versioned function name clusters

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Language support

Language	Parser	Function detection
Python	ast module	Full — accurate line spans, nested functions
JavaScript	Regex + brace depth	Heuristic — function, arrow functions, const fn =
TypeScript	Regex + brace depth	Same as JS
TSX	Regex + brace depth	Same as JS
Vue	Regex + brace depth	Same as JS

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Architecture

Walk repo
  └── Filter by extension, skip excluded dirs
        └── Parse each file into FileContext
              ├── python_ast.py  →  ast.FunctionDef extraction
              └── text_parser.py →  regex + brace-depth heuristics
                    └── Run per-file rules
                          ├── LargeFileRule
                          ├── LargeFunctionRule
                          └── HelperSprawlRule (filename check)
                    └── Run cross-file rules (after all files parsed)
                          ├── DuplicateFunctionsRule (hash map)
                          └── HelperSprawlRule (versioned name clusters)
                                └── Aggregate findings
                                      └── Compute score → ScanResult
                                            └── Reporter (terminal | json)
                                                  └── Exit 0 or 1

Data model

@dataclass
class Finding:
    rule_id: str
    severity: str        # "low" | "medium" | "high"
    file_path: str
    line_start: int | None
    line_end: int | None
    message: str
    score: int

@dataclass
class ScanResult:
    findings: list[Finding]
    total_score: int
    files_scanned: int
    passed: bool

Rule interface

Each per-file rule implements:

def run(self, file_context: FileContext) -> list[Finding]: ...

Each cross-file rule implements:

def run_cross_file(self, contexts: list[FileContext]) -> list[Finding]: ...

Rules are plain classes — no magic, no registration, easy to test in isolation.

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File structure

slopsniff/
├── pyproject.toml
├── README.md
├── src/
│   └── slopsniff/
│       ├── __init__.py
│       ├── cli.py          # Typer entrypoint
│       ├── config.py       # Config dataclass and defaults
│       ├── models.py       # Finding, FunctionInfo, FileContext, ScanResult
│       ├── scanner.py      # Scan pipeline orchestration
│       ├── scoring.py      # compute_score(), grade()
│       ├── walker.py       # Repo traversal with filtering
│       ├── parsers/
│       │   ├── python_ast.py   # ast-based Python parser
│       │   └── text_parser.py  # Regex/brace parser for JS/TS/Vue
│       ├── reporters/
│       │   ├── terminal.py     # Colored terminal output
│       │   └── json_reporter.py
│       └── rules/
│           ├── base.py                  # PerFileRule / CrossFileRule protocols
│           ├── large_file.py
│           ├── large_function.py
│           ├── duplicate_functions.py
│           └── helper_sprawl.py
└── tests/
    ├── test_walker.py
    ├── test_large_file.py
    ├── test_large_function.py
    ├── test_duplicate_functions.py
    └── test_helper_sprawl.py

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CI/CD integration

GitHub Actions

name: SlopSniff

on:
  pull_request:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  slopsniff:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: "3.13"

      - name: Install SlopSniff
        run: pip install slopsniff

      - name: Run SlopSniff
        run: slopsniff . --fail-threshold 20

SlopSniff returns exit code 1 when the total score meets or exceeds the threshold, making it a drop-in CI gate.

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Development

# Clone and install with dev deps
git clone https://github.com/joshuagilley/slopsniff
cd slopsniff
uv sync --dev

# Run tests
uv run pytest

# Lint
uv run ruff check .

# Run CLI locally
uv run slopsniff .

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Defaults reference

Setting	Default
Max file lines (warning)	400
Max file lines (high)	800
Max function lines (warning)	50
Max function lines (high)	100
Fail threshold	20
Included extensions	.py .js .ts .tsx .vue
Excluded directories	.git node_modules .nuxt dist build .venv coverage __pycache__

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Roadmap

• .slopsniff.toml config file support
• --changed-only mode via git diff
• Near-duplicate detection (token fingerprints / MinHash)
• Tree-sitter integration for accurate multi-language AST
• GitHub PR annotation support
• Score baselining for legacy repos
• Suppression comments (# slopsniff: ignore)
• Homebrew tap