tingle

Documentation is at https://tingle.fancysnake.dev.

Spider-sense for refactoring: you know that tingle — the itch that says the codebase isn't right yet. This tool puts a number on it, so you can watch it drop.

Code metrics for the era of constant refactoring.

tingle measures things you want to shrink (or watch) while refactoring a codebase: ignored lint rules, inline # noqa / # type: ignore comments, uses of a legacy class during a strangler-fig migration, lines of code in a package that should disappear.

It runs once, prints the numbers, and stores nothing. To watch a number over months, the metrics-history action records a point per commit that lands and publishes a chart of them.

Install

pip install tingle

Quick start

tingle init                                    # starter tingle.toml
tingle library                                 # ready-made metrics for known tools
tingle add --base tingle.builtins.ruff.noqa_comment
tingle add regex_count '#\s*noqa'              # or state one yourself
tingle add toml_list_length tool.ruff.lint.ignore --name ruff-ignores
tingle                                         # interactive mode (on a terminal)
tingle stat                                    # summary table
tingle stat --json                             # machine-readable output
tingle stat --diff                             # impact of the current branch
tingle report                                  # every occurrence, file:line
tingle report --diff                           # what the branch added/removed
tingle report --group linting                  # one group, or --metric NAME

Metrics are declared in tingle.toml (or a [tool.tingle] section in pyproject.toml):

[ranges.python]
include = ["src/**/*.py", "tests/**/*.py"]
default = true

[[metrics]]
name = "noqa-comments"
type = "regex_count"
pattern = '#\s*noqa'

You can count regex matches, uses of a Python symbol, entries in a TOML or INI list (this is how you count ignored lint rules), files, and lines. See the metric types.

For the tools everyone already runs there are ready-made definitions, so a metric can name one and override only what differs:

[[metrics]]
base = "tingle.builtins.ruff.noqa_comment"
extra_ignore_lines = ['# @generated']

They live in an ordinary Python package, so your team can publish its own. See the template library.

What it does

Three things, in rising order of opinion:

• Measure. tingle stat counts what you told it to count and prints the numbers. Metric values never affect the exit code — tingle measures, it does not judge.
• Attribute. tingle stat --diff measures only what the current branch changed, against the merge-base with a base branch, so commits that landed on the base after you branched don't pollute your numbers.
• Judge. tingle check is the CI gate: the same branch measurement, but it exits 1 if the branch made things worse, so a pull request that takes on debt fails the build.

$ tingle check
noqa-comment (regex_count): +2
  + src/api/views.py:23
  + src/api/views.py:41

$ echo $?
1

Documentation

• Configuration — tingle.toml, ranges, groups.
• Metric types — what you can count, and the limits of each counter.
• Template library — ready-made metrics for known tools, and publishing your own.
• Branch impact — how --diff attributes changes to your branch.
• CI gate — failing the build on new debt.
• History — recording a point per commit and publishing a chart per group, like tingle's own.
• Claude Code plugin — the tingle-config skill, which writes a project's config for you.
• CLI reference — every command and flag.
• Changelog — what each release changed.
• Contributing — setup, the checks, and the layout of the source.

Development

Python 3.11–3.15 are supported (CI runs the full matrix). The project uses mise + Poetry.

mise install
poetry install
mise run test:py      # tests
mise run lint:py      # ruff, mypy, pylint, import-linter
mise run site:dev     # preview the docs site

See contributing for the GLIMPSE source layout and the layer contracts.

License

MIT.