Show HN: Nogic – VS Code extension that visualizes your codebase as a graph(marketplace.visualstudio.com)
135 pointsby davelradindra25 days ago26 comments
  • pentaphobe25 days ago
    All the GitHub links on your extension page are borked (including issues)

    From the look of the associated domain it looks like you're going full product, best of luck

    I'm a huge proponent of graph & visual analysis of complex systems - would have loved to try this out, but will always skip closed source editor extensions (especially in the age of widespread npm supply chain attacks & vibe coding)

    • welder25 days ago
      Here's the source code minified and bundled:

      https://www.gallery.vsassets.io/_apis/public/gallery/publish...

      Unzip that archive and the source is in extension/dist folder.

      • phil-martin24 days ago
        I’m confused - is it the actual source code, or minified/bundled code? I don’t think those two are the same thing - unless of course you write your code minified. That would be really impressive.
        • jasonm2323 days ago
          That would be really impressive levels of psychopathy.
    • davelradindra24 days ago
      We will make this project open source soon!
  • vmware50825 days ago
    I guess it is still useless in Ruby or Ruby on Rails. Standard "find the method declaration" or "used here" do not work in Ruby on Rails. Still, huge companies maintain that Ruby on Rails mess, where you cannot properly investigate, so you just guess and use the search and find option. Those codebases won't be replaced for a while, but good luck working on them. Such a headache!
    • rochak24 days ago
      Man am I glad I don't have to work with Ruby anymore
    • TheRoque25 days ago
      How come nobody came up with an LSP that can perform this, all this time ?
      • federicotdn25 days ago
        I've developed a small tool[1] that has helped me for the same problem, but in Python. Basically just uses simple parsers to attempt to find a definition wherever is sensible. Adding a Ruby module should not be too difficult, but it would probably be trickier than Python to get some good enough results

        [1] https://github.com/federicotdn/irk

      • IshKebab25 days ago
        Because it's an unsolvable problem without static type annotations and as far as I'm aware Ruby doesn't have a good solution for those yet (or if they do nobody uses it).
        • 1-more24 days ago
          Sorbet is a decent one. I don't think it ever solved "jump to definition" though. I would just `rg def (self\.)?function_name` or I eventually developed a vibe for where things were, which is sort of the Ruby excuse for the ungreppability of everything. Sorbet did allow us to generate front end types in Elm and also allowed for type safe Haskell FFI. Past tense because it's an old job; as far as I know it's still happening.
        • hiccuphippo24 days ago
          Someone needs to make TypeScript for Ruby.
    • louiskottmann24 days ago
      First of all, ruby-lsp does a great job at this, and the recent Herb helps with frontend templates.

      This is enough to navigate between controllers, models and libs, unless you're trying hard to be clever which you shouldn't.

      Then, in Rails, things have a canonical place in the codebase, that is consistent between codebases.

      This is in contrast to languages and frameworks where every codebase is setup differently, but the static typing helps find code wherever it's hidden without pain, and thus without need for cleanup and thoughtful design.

      To each their own, I prefer power for me, and pain for whoever drifts from the convention.

  • bulletsvshumans25 days ago
    Please publish to Open VSX so it is easily available for VS Code forks like Cursor as well.
  • tiborsaas25 days ago
    I've tried it, but it's very slow on a not too complex codebase with my M3 Macbook Air.

        --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Language             Files        Lines        Blank      Comment         Code
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Typescript JSX         121        18724         1699         1051        15974
     TypeScript              61         5389          629          550         4210
     CSS                      5         1039           50           22          967
     Markdown                 3          657          173            0          484
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It was like 5-10FPS at best, not really usable unfortunately because I like these tools.

    I'm using another similar one which is buttery smooth, Code Canvas.

    • davelradindra24 days ago
      We are actively improving on the performance! Also, I am a previous code canvas user too, but I felt like it didn't help me understand my codebase as much as I wanted it to.. that's why I decided to experiment something myself! :)
      • tiborsaas24 days ago
        Thanks, CC is really helpful already for me the more tools like these exists, the better. With AI coding agents, I keep watching the visualization rather than the changeset first.
  • everlier25 days ago
    Nice, I wanted to build something similar for a long time. The coolest thing is to start summarising clusters for very large codebases, which essentially provides an LoD system for the context.
    • davelradindra24 days ago
      We were thinking of creating an MCP Server that could integrate well with the visualizer extension so that you'd understand the cluster visually and descriptively, so watch out for that! :) X: @Davellele
  • oersted25 days ago
    Looks great, it was actually just playing around yesterday with `code canvas app` which is similar, and also Charkoal.dev and Haystack Editor (before code-review pivot) which are related. Yours looks better than any of them already!

    I wish it was available in Cursor as well though. Not sure how exactly they manage their marketplace, most VSCode extensions seem to be there but now and then I encounter one that is missing for no apparent reason.

    • davelradindra24 days ago
      It is on Open VSX so you can download it directly from Cursor!
      • oersted22 days ago
        Great! I tried it on a standard Django project but it's not displaying any edges. It is able to detect imports at least, because "Add Connected Files" works, but no edges at all.

        Is there a good place to report such issues?

        • ryannampham19 days ago
          hey! one of the co-founders of nogic here. sorry for the late response!! feel free to report your bug here on the nogic discord: https://discord.gg/pE9sadAm. there are a couple of issues regarding edges not showing in some cases, and we are hoping to address all of these issues by the end of the week.
  • puppycodes25 days ago
    I definitly think more tools like this are needed, but not open sourcing it is a mistake.

    You will be quickly replaced by a friendlier competitor.

  • nebula880425 days ago
    Very cool visualization. However it crashes on a more complex project. I added a folder with 2000+ files(included my assets) and now the visualizer locks up then shows nothing on its tab in VSCode. How do I manually delete old boards so that I can try again with a smaller slice of the code(without assets)?
  • Imustaskforhelp25 days ago
    Funny how world is so tiny. I am literally building myself an vscode extension which can abstract an api on top of google colab's vscode extension and I am able to effectively create a sandbox for any python code (I mean to be fair they all still share the same resource but that resource is of google)

    I have also hacked together a way for it to create new kernels aka new vm's itself but that becomes really really slow and also I am trying to look at other options to sandbox inside the jupyter notebook itself.

    The end result was very messy though so I was literally just currently experimenting with if I could just scrape/automate it from the browser directly.

    All in All I must admit that Vscode extensions are/feel very quite competent from what I can gather.

  • patabyte25 days ago
    I've been having great success with LLMs generating Mermaid diagrams and flowcharts from a repo. Claude Code and Cursor both do consistently great jobs. For example: `generate a mermaid swimlanes diagram of the XX logic flow`.
    • davelradindra24 days ago
      This is what I do previously too! The problem that I realize with them is that mermaid diagrams and flowcharts are static and sometimes oversimplified.
  • fpauser25 days ago
    Closed source vscode extensions: not for me.
  • fishgoesblub25 days ago
    Unfortunately the repository links are broken and this is ARR licensed.
  • kelsolaar24 days ago
    Quite enjoying the idea as I have been looking for something like this for a while but it is reallllllly slow for our medium sized codebase, I have like 2 or 3 fps on my M1: https://github.com/colour-science/colour/tree/develop/colour
  • doc_ick20 days ago
    I like the looks of it, but until it's open-sourced, it'll be a nope for me. As it seems like they've had their website up since late last year but no code up.
  • aqula24 days ago
    Really cool! I'm also dabbling with this idea. The biggest challenge I find is to reduce noise. Large codebases come with a lot of cruft. Surfacing every small detail in the visualization tends to make it messy and less useful. I've not seen contemporary tools tackle this, but think can be useful.
  • wek25 days ago
    From your first page, this looks cool and needed. But as others have posted, I can't get to your github pages.
  • Aspos25 days ago
    The illustration gif is way too fast. Hard to understand what is going on. Slow it down 2x or so.
  • apem24 days ago
    Super cool! I've thought of literally this so many times.

    Is there any way to add a file to a board, then "explore" the imports of that file and potentially adding those files as well? I'm thinking as a way to explore a code base better.

    Best of luck :)

  • suprjami25 days ago
    Only JS, TypeScript, and Python. You got me all excited for a C visualizer!
  • kachapopopow25 days ago
    I always liked the idea having relationship based programming (graph programming), but with actual code. Never actually made the effort to make something like that. Pretty neat either way.
    • davelradindra24 days ago
      Thanks! Shoot me a message if you would like to have something added :) X: @Davellele
  • Scene_Cast225 days ago
    I used to use Doxygen to create caller and callee graphs to understand code flow. Unfortunately, the tool hasn't really changed in more than a decade.
  • 25 days ago
    undefined
  • amd6424 days ago
    Recommend Lumyst - lumystai.com
  • dolevalgam24 days ago
    This is incredibly needed!!
  • matiszz24 days ago
    This is incredibly useful!
  • frmfrm24 days ago
    Very nice!