Codebase intelligence glossary

In software, the blast radius of a change is the full set of code that the change can affect — every file, function, API route and page that depends on what you are about to modify, directly or through a chain of other dependencies.

Change impact analysis is the practice of determining what else a proposed code change will affect before you make it — identifying the dependent code, tests, data and interfaces that could break.

A dependency graph is a model of a codebase in which each file or module is a node and each import or call is an edge. It shows what depends on what, which lets you trace how a change propagates and see which files are central to the system.

Dead code is code that can never run — unused exports, unreachable branches, functions nobody calls. Zombie code runs, but for no reason: it is reached only by other unused code, so the whole cluster is effectively orphaned even though each piece looks used.

A codebase health score is a single number, usually from 0 to 100, that summarises the maintainability of a repository by combining several measured signals — such as dead code, test coverage, file size and duplication — into one figure you can track over time.

The bus factor of a project is the number of people who would have to leave — colloquially, “be hit by a bus” — before the project stalls because the knowledge needed to maintain it is gone.

Code ownership is the mapping of who is responsible for — or most knowledgeable about — each part of a codebase. It can be formal, declared in a CODEOWNERS file, or implicit, inferred from who has written and reviewed the code over time.

Technical due diligence is the assessment of a software asset before an acquisition, investment or major engagement — evaluating code quality, architecture, security, dependencies and key-person risk to understand what a buyer is actually acquiring.

Codebase intelligence is a category of tooling that analyses an entire repository — its structure, dependencies, history and risks — to answer questions about the system as a whole, rather than checking one file at a time.

Repository intelligence is another name for codebase intelligence — analysis of a whole repository's structure, dependencies, history and risks to answer questions about the system as a whole. The two terms are used interchangeably.

An intent map is a description of why each part of a codebase exists — the purpose of a file or module and the capability it implements — as opposed to a dependency map, which shows only how the parts connect.