A few years ago Ken spent 4 hours manually mapping Git’s 468-source-file tree into a functional architecture in Understand. We did the same for CMake — twice the size at 1,025 files — plus wrote this blog post, in about an hour. AI-assisted code archaeology is getting fast.
Category: Useful Scripts
What’s New in the Understand 8.0 Python API
Understand 8.0 ships with a batch of Python API additions that have been on the wishlist for a while. Some of these close gaps that have been annoying plugin authors for years; a few open up workflows that weren’t really possible before.
Teaching AI the Understand API with MCP
We built an MCP server that lets AI call the Understand API instead of guessing about code. This article walks through the design choices, implementation, and setup required to make that work in practice.
What Happens When You Teach ChatGPT the Understand API?
We built a custom ChatGPT assistant to help users write and debug scripts using the Understand Python API, making Understand’s power more accessible and efficient.
Spice Up Your Code Metrics with Interactive Reports
Understand 7.0’s new Interactive Reports transform raw code metrics into insightful and engaging visualizations, offering customization options to tailor the analysis to your specific needs and reveal the true story behind your code.
Custom Charts in Understand 7.0
Understand 7.0 makes it easier for users to create custom charts. With new tools and a redesigned Plugin Manager, developers can change existing charts or make new ones to fit their needs. This gives users more flexibility when analyzing and presenting their code.
Finding Shared Global Objects
Having problems with threading? Check out these plugins to identify shared global objects. The plugins also use a cool trick: architectures as entity tags to store information like thread priorities.
Duplicate Lines of Code
Revisiting how we detect and report duplicate lines of code, and creating a plugin metric to report it.
Dependency Networks with Understand
A script to calculate and display design structure matrices based on file dependencies—plus lots of cool metrics based on the matrix.
Custom Report: Finding Parameter Values
Understand’s Python API makes it a great platform for creating quick tools to explore exactly what you are interested in. In this case, I was curious if a default parameter was ever set to a non-default value or if a given parameter is always the same value. Check out these two custom interactive reports that show parameter values for each call.