All 100 ideasCoding
#47 of 100 · Coding
Ask questions of your codebase
An AI that reads a whole codebase, finds the files relevant to a plain-English task, explains them and uses current docs.
Asks per year
What the askers want
- Would pay20%
- Want it local or private0%
- Object to subscriptions10%
- Want it open source or self-hosted0%
- Want AI to do it70%
Share of the 10 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.
What exists on Show HN
Built, still asked for53 Show HN launches do this job, and 27 more do part of it. People still ask, so the launches are missed, unknown, or not what they want. Ask what they’re missing before you build.
- Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks2025 · 257 pts
- Aide, an open-source AI native IDE2024 · 253 pts
- SeaGOAT – local, “AI-based” grep for semantic code search2023 · 240 pts
- Phind V2 – A GPT-4 agent that’s connected to the internet and your code2023 · 221 pts
- How we leapfrogged traditional vector based RAG with a 'language map'2024 · 162 pts
- Bloop – Answer questions about your code with an LLM agent2023 · 118 pts
- Sourcebot – Self-hosted Perplexity for your codebase2025 · 103 pts
- Mutable.ai Codebase chat that uses a Wiki for RAG2024 · 48 pts
The idea, as matched
An AI tool that understands a whole codebase or library: finds the files relevant to a plain-English question or task, explains unfamiliar or legacy code, and uses up-to-date docs and language-server info.
Jev first matched 14 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 10 of 14.
Every ask, newest first
Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.
Reader’s note. Older asks are plain code explainers.
- Feb 2025Would pay per repo for a tool that documents an inherited codebase as readable domain breakdowns. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)”
- Feb 2025Wants a tool that picks relevant files from a prompt, then edits and creates them without manual context. Read it: a comment in “The demise of software engineers due to AI is greatly exaggerated”
- Jan 2025Wants a code assistant that pulls information directly from language-specific tooling through LSP. Read it: a comment in “voyage-code-3”
- Nov 2024Wants an AI tool that ingests a codebase and finds relevant tables, controllers and services from abstract questions. Read it: a comment in “OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are struggling to build more advanced AI”
- Apr 2024Wants an LLM coding tool that fits an existing project, letting them pick context files manually or automatically. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Which tools do you use for LLM-assisted programming?”
- Sep 2023Wants a coding tool with up-to-date framework docs and source, like Next.js and Tailwind, as models lag. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Is there an AI coding assistant that allows adding up to date libraries?”
- Mar 2023Would pay for a chat layer over a codebase that explains its data model and modules. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: LLM for “talking to” a code repo? (like chatpdf.com, but for a codebase)”
- Jul 2022Wants a tool giving system-level design context when joining a project, rather than style nitpicks. Read it: a comment in “An ex-Googler's guide to dev tools (2020)”
- Jan 2016Wants a website where pasted JavaScript is explained in detail line by line. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: JavaScript code explainer?”
- Nov 2013Argues that tradeoffs beat markup purity and wants tooling that shows the right stack information when needed. Read it: a comment in “Twitter Bootstrap without all the debt”
Building this?
Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.
Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own
This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.
$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.