Output Files

Output Files

All generated files live under codebase-out/ in the working directory. This directory is sandboxed — codebase-vis never writes outside of it.

File	Description
graph.json	Full dependency graph in graphology JSON format with community, color, language, and semantic_summary attributes
graph.html	Self-contained interactive visualizer (open in any browser)
cycles.json	Circular dependency data (created by detect)
semantic-summary.md	LLM-generated architectural report (created by explain)
.cache.json	Incremental parse cache (mtime + size fingerprints)
.explain-retry.json	Failed clusters for retry (created when some explain clusters fail)

graph.json

The core data file. Contains:

• nodes[] — every file, external package, and class/function entity
• edges[] — dependency relationships between nodes
• options — graph metadata (type, multi, allowSelfLoops)
• attributes — semantic summaries (populated by explain)

See graph.json Format for a detailed breakdown.

graph.html

A self-contained HTML file — no build step, no server dependency, no CDN references (except vis-network loaded at runtime). Embeds the full visualizer with dark-mode UI, glassmorphism sidebar, ForceAtlas2 physics, minimap, and cycle overlay.

.cache.json

Stores parsed results alongside file modification time and size. On subsequent generate runs, files whose mtime and size match the cache entry skip re-parsing entirely. This makes repeated runs near-instant for codebases with few changes.

cycles.json

Created by codebase-vis detect. Contains detected cycles with their file chains, edge references, and labels. Read by graph.html to render the cycle overlay.

semantic-summary.md

Created by codebase-vis explain. Contains LLM-generated summaries for each community cluster in your codebase. Each entry describes what the files in that module do and how they relate to each other.

.explain-retry.json

If some clusters fail during explain (e.g., rate limits), the failed ones are saved here. Run codebase-vis explain --retry to retry only the failed clusters.