spotregen

Tooling for Regenerative Software in the sense of Chad Fowler: code is disposable, the knowledge around it is the asset. A module is safely replaceable when it can be deleted and rebuilt from knowledge that lives outside its implementation. spotregen reads that knowledge from a tracked regen/ tree and checks it against the source tree.

• Standard library only: zero runtime dependencies, Python 3.13 or later.
• It never imports the modules it describes; it reads the source with ast.
• A deterministic gate (spotregen check) for make guard, plus reports (status, deletion-test, context, compact, new-unit), three measures (measures for intent coverage and specification size, mutate for evaluation strength of one unit, measures --strength for all three of every unit) and two non-deterministic drivers (blind, local) that regenerate a unit with an LLM.

Install

uv add --dev spotregen

Use

spotregen check [--strict]            # the gate: exit 1 on errors
spotregen status                      # units by pace and coverage
spotregen deletion-test UNIT          # blast radius and knowledge gaps
spotregen context UNIT [-o FILE]      # regeneration bundle, no bodies
spotregen compact                     # compaction candidates
spotregen measures [--strength]       # intent coverage and specification size; --strength
                                      # adds evaluation strength (slow: runs every mutant)
spotregen mutate UNIT [--out FILE]    # evaluation strength: planted mutants
spotregen new-unit MODULE --pace P --risk R [--dry-run]
spotregen blind UNIT [...]            # regenerate with `claude -p` (needs claude)
spotregen local UNIT --model M [...]  # regenerate with a local LM Studio model

--root DIR selects the repository (default: search upwards for regen/architecture.toml); python -m spotregen works as well. A repository carries:

• regen/architecture.toml: the compilation target (allowed imports, accepted cycles, pace policy, conventions, scan directories).
• regen/units/<unit>.toml: one regenerable unit with intent, evaluations and consumers.
• regen/decisions/<id>.toml: provenance records.

The schema, the finding codes and the tutorials are in the documentation, https://advm1.gm.fh-koeln.de/~bartz/spotregen/. A minimal repository for trying it out is built by spotregen.make_sample_repo.

Develop

make sync && make test-fast     # environment and fast tests
make verify                     # guard + lint + test + doc, the gate before a push

See CONTRIBUTING.md and RELEASING.md. The design is recorded in ADR 0001.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later.