CodeCausality — Change Impact Intelligence

Trace change. Understand impact.

CodeCausality helps you understand how a repository is connected and what a code change could affect before you ship it.

It runs locally inside VS Code and turns source relationships, Git changes, tests, architecture rules, ownership, and history into a full-width CodeCausality Impact editor tab.

Why CodeCausality?

Changing one file rarely affects only one file.

Before a refactor, bug fix, or review, developers often have to manually answer:

• What depends on this file?
• Which modules could be affected?
• Which tests should I run?
• Does this change cross an architecture boundary?
• Who owns the affected code?
• Is this a historically risky area?

CodeCausality brings those signals together inside VS Code.

V1 highlights

Modern dashboard experience

CodeCausality opens a full-width editor dashboard with risk-aware metric cards, interactive graph controls, responsive evidence cards, and VS Code-native theming.

Analyze the current file

Open a source file and run:

CodeCausality: Analyze Current File

See its direct and transitive blast radius, affected modules, recommended tests, architecture evidence, ownership, and history.

Analyze your working tree

Run:

CodeCausality: Analyze Working Tree

CodeCausality detects your current Git changes and shows their combined impact.

Interactive impact graph

Explore how a change propagates through the repository:

• changed files
• downstream affected files
• affected tests
• dependency edges
• path search
• changed / affected / test filters
• click-to-open navigation

Recommended tests

CodeCausality combines dependency-graph evidence with deterministic matching heuristics to identify tests that are likely relevant to the change.

Architecture guardrails

Optional rules in .codecausality.json let you flag forbidden dependency directions such as UI code directly reaching a data layer.

Ownership and history

When available, CodeCausality surfaces:

• CODEOWNERS
• Git commit count
• churn
• last-touch author

Quick start

1. Install CodeCausality.
2. Open a JavaScript or TypeScript Git repository.
3. Open a source file or make a Git working-tree change.
4. Run CodeCausality: Analyze Current File or CodeCausality: Analyze Working Tree.
5. CodeCausality opens a reusable CodeCausality Impact editor tab with the full analysis.

You can also run:

CodeCausality: Getting Started

from the Command Palette.

Repository configuration

Create .codecausality.json in the repository root when you need custom exclusions or architecture boundaries.

{
  "ignore": ["generated/**", "vendor/**"],
  "moduleDepth": 2,
  "architecture": {
    "boundaries": [
      {
        "name": "ui-must-not-access-data",
        "from": ["src/ui/**"],
        "disallow": ["src/data/**"],
        "severity": "error"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Configuration is optional. CodeCausality works without it.

Privacy

CodeCausality V1 is local-first:

• no account required
• no API key required
• no repository upload
• no telemetry collected by CodeCausality
• no analytics service
• no LLM or cloud dependency for V1 analysis

The extension reads workspace source files and local Git metadata only to produce change-impact intelligence in your editor.

See PRIVACY.md for the complete V1 privacy statement.

Workspace trust

CodeCausality does not run repository analysis in VS Code untrusted workspaces. Trust the workspace before running analysis.

Language support

V1 relationship analysis is strongest for:

• JavaScript
• TypeScript
• JSX
• TSX

The graph model is designed to support more language analyzers in later releases, but V1 Marketplace positioning is intentionally focused on the experience we can support well today.

Install from VSIX

For manual testing before Marketplace publication:

code --install-extension codecausality-1.0.5.vsix

Or use Extensions → … → Install from VSIX… inside VS Code.

Support

Use the GitHub issue tracker for bugs and feature requests.

See SUPPORT.md.

Links

• Repository: https://github.com/Aetherexa/CodeCausality
• Issues: https://github.com/Aetherexa/CodeCausality/issues
• Architecture: https://github.com/Aetherexa/CodeCausality/blob/main/docs/ARCHITECTURE.md

License

MIT