Navvy

Five git commands, run in under a minute, that tell you more about a codebase than an hour of reading code. Commit history is diagnostic data — it reveals team dynamics, risk concentration, and maintenance patterns that the code itself cannot.

Run all five commands, then synthesize the results into a diagnostic report.

The Commands

Run these in parallel where possible. Adjust --since to match the project's age — use 1 year ago for active projects, extend for slower-moving ones.

1. Churn hotspots

git log --format=format: --name-only --since="1 year ago" | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20

The 20 most-modified files in the past year. High churn on a file that nobody wants to own is the clearest signal of codebase drag — these files have unpredictable blast radius and inflate estimates.

2. Contributor map