tingle

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 — pipe the JSON into whatever tracks history for you (CI artifacts, dashboards, a spreadsheet).

📖 Documentation: https://fancysnake.github.io/tingle/

Install

$ pip install tingle

Quick start

$ tingle init                                    # starter tingle.toml
$ tingle add regex_count '#\s*noqa'              # add a metric from the CLI
$ 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

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.

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.
• Branch impact — how --diff attributes changes to your branch.
• CI gate — failing the build on new debt.
• CLI reference — every command and flag.

Development

Python 3.11–3.14 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 docs:serve   # preview the docs site

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

License

MIT.