Zero-config. No account. No setup.

Find Technical Debt Before It Costs You

Excavate scans your JavaScript & TypeScript codebase analyzing git history, code complexity, coverage gaps, ownership risk, temporal coupling, and more. Get actionable insights in seconds.

View on GitHub
0
Setup Required
100%
Local Analysis
MIT
Open Source

Nine Signals, One Score

Excavate combines multiple engineering signals into a single weighted technical debt score per file

Git Churn

Files that change too often become liabilities

25% weight

Coverage Gaps

Risky files without test safety net

25% weight

Complexity

Code that's hard to understand and maintain

20% weight

Knowledge Risk

Identifies files owned by too few people where knowledge leaves with one developer

Documentation Debt

Surfaces TODO, FIXME, HACK markers and low-comment areas needing attention

Temporal Coupling

Detects files that change together, revealing hidden dependencies and tight coupling

Orphan Files

Finds unused files that appear disconnected from the rest of the codebase

Dead Exports

Discovers exported code that nothing imports, eliminating unnecessary bloat

Dependency Risk

Identifies circular dependencies, stale packages, and known CVEs

Enterprise-Grade Security

Your source code never leaves your machine. All analysis happens locally with zero external communication.

Zero Data Transmission

No network calls. No telemetry. No tracking. Your code stays completely private and never leaves your device.

Local Analysis Engine

All computation runs on your machine. No cloud dependencies. Perfect for regulated industries and sensitive codebases.

Complete Transparency

Open source MIT license. Inspect the code. No hidden data collection. Audit exactly what's happening.

Compliance Ready

  • ✓ HIPAA compliant (no data transmission)
  • ✓ GDPR compliant (local processing only)
  • ✓ SOC 2 friendly (air-gappable)
  • ✓ Works offline completely
  • ✓ No vendor lock-in

Git-Based Analysis

  • ✓ Uses only local git history
  • ✓ Requires existing repository
  • ✓ No new accounts or services
  • ✓ Minimal dependencies (Node.js only)
  • ✓ Works in offline environments

How Excavate Works

A sophisticated multi-signal analysis engine that synthesizes engineering data into actionable insights

1

Parse Git History

Excavate reads your git commit history and file blame data to understand how your codebase has evolved. This reveals files that change frequently (high churn) and who owns each piece of code.

2

Analyze Code Structure

The engine scans your code for complexity metrics, dependencies, exports, and code patterns. It builds a dependency graph to identify circular imports, dead exports, and orphan files.

3

Detect Patterns

Temporal coupling analysis reveals files that change together. Documentation analysis finds TODOs, FIXMEs, and HALFs. Ownership risk identifies single-person bottlenecks.

4

Calculate Technical Debt Score

All signals are weighted and combined into a single debt score per file. High scores indicate files at highest risk of bugs, difficult to change, or close to knowledge loss.

5

Generate Beautiful Report

Output a self-contained HTML report with interactive D3 treemaps, sortable data tables, trend charts, and LLM prompts to understand and refactor your highest-risk files.

Why Excavate?

1

Works Out of the Box

No configuration files. No credentials. No servers. Just run npx excavate and start seeing your technical debt.

2

Your Code Stays Private

All analysis runs locally on your machine. No source code leaves your environment. No accounts. No internet required for core scanning.

3

Faster Than Opinions

Most tools show what your code looks like today. Excavate shows what your codebase has been struggling with over time, using git history and nine analysis signals.

4

Generate Shareable Reports

Create beautiful, self-contained HTML reports with D3 treemaps, sortable tables, trend charts, and copyable LLM prompts for each file.

Who Uses Excavate?

From startups to enterprises, teams use Excavate to understand and prioritize technical debt

Engineering Leads

Prioritize refactoring efforts, allocate resources to high-risk areas, and make data-driven technical decisions about where to invest.

Architects

Understand code organization risks, identify coupling patterns, discover orphan code, and plan refactoring roadmaps with confidence.

Compliance Teams

Run audits without leaving your network, generate compliance reports, identify knowledge risks, and maintain full code privacy.

DevOps & Release Teams

Assess release risk, understand which files are prone to bugs, identify complex areas needing extra testing, and prevent incidents.

The Numbers Behind Excavate

Powerful metrics from git history and code analysis combined into one risk score

25%
Git Churn
File change frequency
25%
Test Coverage
Missing test safety
20%
Complexity
Cyclomatic complexity
10%
Knowledge Risk
Single-person files
10%
Coupling
Temporal dependencies
10%
Documentation
TODO/FIXME markers

Ready to Find Your Technical Debt?

Start analyzing your codebase today. It takes less than a minute.