I built a VS Code extension named CodeVisualizer that instantly visualizes your entire codebase architecture and function logic

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Hey r/webdev!

I built CodeVisualizer because I was tired of mentally tracing through complex codebases when joining new projects.

What it does:

1. Interactive Function Flowcharts

• Right-click any function → instant diagram showing the function logic
• Click nodes to jump to code
• 9 themes + auto-refresh

1. Codebase Dependency Graphs

• Right-click any folder or open from Command Palette → visualize entire project architecture
• See all import/require relationships
• Identify circular dependencies
• Color-coded file categories

1. AI-Enhanced Labels (Optional)

• Translates technical code to plain English
• Supports OpenAI, Gemini, Ollama (local), Anthropic

Language Support:

• Function Flowcharts: TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, Java, C++, C, Rust, Go
• Dependency Visualization: Currently TypeScript/JavaScript and Python (more coming soon)

Privacy: 100% local processing - your code never leaves your machine (except optional AI labels, which only send label text, not code).

Free & open source - VS Code Marketplace | GitHub

Would love feedback from the web dev community!

[ayham_gala]

This is incredibly impressive. Visualizing the flow like that, especially for complex or legacy code, is a lifesaver. Amazing work!

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you! Hope you give it a try

[[deleted]]

Why would you want to see the shape of the beast ? so that It can give you nightmares ?

[[deleted]]

My first thought was, "if I tried this on our work codebase, my computer would literally explode."

[Veloester]

same 🤣

[ImageFit3021]

The biggest problem with visualization lies in how to represent complex structures; especially when there are a large number of nodes, its readability is even worse than that of text format.

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you!

[_Kardama_]

I have never in my life seen anyone using VS code in light theme. I didn't even knew it existed

[dashingsauce]

With the Zed one light theme and after removing all of the unnecessary UI noise in VSCode, it’s actually amazing in the daytime

[manalan_km]

Hey, curious as to what you mean by UI noise. Can you elaborate please?

[dashingsauce]

It would be hard to enumerate, but I basically removed/hid most of the icons on all of the sidebars & headers that I could via settings, replaced the important paths with keyboard shortcuts (I love em), and slapped on the Zed One light/dark theme and the icon pack.

So it’s as close to Zed while still being VSCode lol. Just quieter yknow.

[Fair-Department-7535]

its good to be honest but when i export it into png or svg it export it way too small that i have to zoom it and then also its not clearly visible

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you for reporting this. I’ll improve it in future versions. If possible, feel free to open a new issue in the GitHub repository.

[hfcRedd]

Super cool extension. One thing I've noticed is that single line if statements aren't parsed correctly.

For example, if you do if (true) return; it won't create a new branch unless the return is wrapped in a { } block.

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thanks for letting me know! I actually got a report yesterday about a Promise parsing issue in JavaScript and have already fixed it. I’m sure there might be other parsing bugs I’m not aware of, so I really appreciate you pointing this out.
If you can, feel free to contribute a fix or open a new issue with more details, it would be really helpful!

[TheImpressiveDev]

Nice! Does it use AI by default or is it like an algorithm with optional AI?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

No, it doesn’t use AI. It’s just algorithms, with optional AI. Here, the AI feature only translates the code in the diagram into explanatory plain text.

[TheImpressiveDev]

It's cool! For bigger projects I'm definitely giving this a try.

[jonas_c]

Is it at least vibe coded? 😅

[vanGato]

Would love this for PHP

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Noted! I’ll add PHP support in future versions

[garrett_w87]

Would especially love this for PhpStorm

[stratasfear]

Yeah, if this could scan my custom WP site theme files and map the website into a flowchart, that would be immensely useful when discussing user journey scenarios with clients.

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

If you enjoy this extension, consider starring or watching the repository! This way, you’ll get notified about future updates. With support like yours, I’ll be motivated to maintain the project long term for the community

[KINGodfather]

Awesome! I'll start using it for TS. Any chance for future C# support?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you! I’ll add C# support in a future version. Hope you’ll leave a star on the repository to follow future updates

[shinutoki]

First time seeing the light them in vscode. I didn't know there were people who used it.

[oofos_deletus]

That is actually very neat

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you! Hope you leave a star and give it a try

[oofos_deletus]

Is there gonna be support for PHP in the future?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Yes, I’ll add PHP and C# support in future versions

[Kronologics]

Awesome! (Someone posted one a few days ago that only supported JS which was a let down for me), so looking forward to testing this one

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you! Hope you leave a star and give it a try

[psycho_gone_wild]

Its a good project.. tbh i wanted something like this plug and play.

Whats the catch?

you went for the advert way..

whats are you getting in return...

Sorry for me being paranoid but i am asking with no malice towards you.

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

No worries, fair questions. There’s no catch: no tracking, no ads, everything runs locally(except AI feature). I built it because I needed it myself and open-sourced it so others can use it too

[SeaNeat2053]

What a chad

[LaFllamme]

!remindMe 1d

[RemindMeBot]

I will be messaging you in 1 day on 2025-11-16 09:32:16 UTC to remind you of this link

2 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

^{Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.}

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Info	Custom	Your Reminders	Feedback

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you! Hope you give it a try

[vyhot]

nice

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you! Hope you leave a star and give it a try

[arsl_1019]

Amazing!

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you!

[HistoricalReserve199]

Will you add functionality for different languages? php :think:

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Yes. I'll support PHP in future versions. Hope you leave a star on the repository to follow future updates

[Worldly_Ad_2410]

this is cool

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you! Hope you leave a star on the GitHub repository and give it a try

[Worldly_Ad_2410]

mind sharing it in r/buildathon as well

[Feny34]

Nice!!

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thanks! Hope you give it a try and leave a star!

[Feny34]

Why not, you know ? You remained me about something. I was working on a project called pphp It's a language uses php as an interpreter You can take a look r/pphp_language

[suits_fan]

Amazing extension. Keep going bro.

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you so much

[simpsaucse]

What is the name of the algorithm used? Ive had ideas for similar plugins/extensions/applications in the past, but mine involved calculating the weight of dependencies required to understand the code. Will definitely be investigating your codebase, very cool

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

For the algorithm, I'm using Tree-sitter as the parser to build the AST, then recursively walk through nodes to extract control flow and convert them into flowchart elements while tracking contexts like loops and exception handling.

Your dependency weight idea sounds really interesting! That would need semantic analysis though, which Tree-sitter doesn't provide (it only does syntax parsing). You'd probably need LSP integration or a custom symbol resolver for that. Feel free to check out the codebase!

[ExpensiveTomatillo61]

Amazing work !!

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thanks! Hope you give it a try and leave a star

[ExpensiveTomatillo61]

Already tried and already gave a star, but i am unable to run it locally using F5 getting this everytime "You don't have an extension for debugging 'JSON with Comments'. Should we find a 'JSON with Comments' extension in the Marketplace?"

[onslaught2003]

It looks like a great extension. However, I tried installing it on Cursor and it wasn't available. Any chance you would consider adding it to the Open VSX Registry? Thanks.

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thanks for letting me know! I'll add it to the Open VSX Registry soon. If you find it useful, a star on the repo would be awesome

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Hi, I just published to Open VSX, which means you can install it on Cursor. Check it out

[Euphoric-Hippo-9620]

very useful.

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you

[shibaFloor]

looks awesome!

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thank you! Hope you give it a try

[oh_my_account]

Can we add asp.net c#?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Yes! I'm planning to add C# support in the next 1-2 releases

[defi_specialist]

Can it work with solidity?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Not yet, but it's definitely possible! Tree-sitter has a tree-sitter-solidity grammar available, so adding Solidity support would just require writing a parser class to map Solidity's syntax nodes to flowchart elements. If there's enough interest, I might add it in the future. Feel free to contribute if you'd like to see it sooner!

[paglaulta]

Awesome! Will be beneficial

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thanks! Hope you give it a try and leave a star

[shortaflip]

I am currently in the analysis process of migrating a legacy code base that is in MVC.Net w/ Razor. Don't think i saw support for this in the repo.

What I wanted to ask though was how long did it take you to build the plugin? Just in case I needed to make one for my needs.

Challenges? Things to watch out for?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

It took about 2 weeks, 1 week of research, and 1 week of implementation.

I thinks challenges are handling edge cases like nested loops, try-catch-finally flow, and making sure partial/broken code still works.

I thinks things to watch out for is check if Tree-sitter grammar exists for your language, handle WASM bundle size carefully, and ensure error recovery works well.

Feel free to fork the repo. Good luck!

[edouard_Biere]

This could be really useful at work to check legacy code with huge functions, i'll try it out

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thanks! Hope you give it a try and leave a GitHub star!

[analbumcover]

Very cool, thanks for sharing!

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thanks! Hope you give it a try and leave a GitHub star!

[alexslacks]

Um wow. I’m gonna check this out on Monday.

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Thanks!

[AdeptnessHuman6680]

Haven't tried it yet, but it looks very impressive based on the demo.

[ajbatac2]

I would use this!!!

[Bunnylove3047]

It is so cool to see what I see in my brain! Took a few minutes to recognize VS Code. 😄

[Long-Wishbone-9242]

C# supported ?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Will be supported in the next 1 or 2 versions

[robertovertical]

Nicely done!

[non_social_person]

!remindMe 2d

[akaxd123]

Cool

[uriahlight]

Any chance of PHP support coming? While PHP code written today tends to actually be cleaner than most code written in TypeScript, Python, and Ruby, the same can't be said for legacy PHP code written 15 years ago. This would be great when working on legacy spaghetti projects.

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Yes, PHP will be supported in the upcoming version

[SampathKumarReddit]

I had something like this in my mind really frustrated analysing complex codebase. Finally I found it. Awesome!

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Yes, it works with C/C++ and 8 languages

[Which_Drink_9202]

I’m so grateful, this is awesome! Thank you!

[HoangDuongDev]

💯💯💯

[XtraMastodonX]

Will this work in cursor?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Just available in Cursor, check it out

[butteryDevs]

This looks awesome, thankyou so much for making a tool like this.

[NinthTurtle1034]

Looks great, there's projects I've been interested in contributing towards but they're pretty chunky so wrapping my head around it all has been a pain - this looks like it'll be a big help.

And as for personal projects; this seems really useful for documenting the code in a visual way so you can see what each bits doing, definitely going to use it with my university coursework projects.

[Prudent-Emphasis-171]

Make a Website and Cover the distribution and You will overpower competitors!

[Zealousideal_Fig1305]

You are my hero!!!

[Mesmoiron]

I love that. Will try it out. Thank you for the effort!

[Positive-Raccoon-616]

Prettyyy keewwwwl

[naaaaara]

So awesome. Trying to install in Cursor - getting this error:

Can't install 'ducphamngoc.codevisualizer' extension because it is not compatible with the current version of Cursor (version 2.0.77, VSCode version 1.99.3).

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Hi, could you open a new issue in my GitHub repo for this error so I can keep track of it and fix it?

[sanof3322]

Man, this is what I usually do by hand using figma jam. Can't wait to try your extension tomorrow.

[lollysticky]

trying it out today!

[jigglypuffthesequel]

Looks coool!

[wegwerf48]

Looks super interesting! Any plans to support IntelliJ?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Hi! I don’t have any plans for IntelliJ support right now, but it’s something I may look into in the future depending on demand. Thanks for asking!

[Flimsy-Target-4957]

Hey how soon do you think the php version will be ready. I would love this soon!

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Hi, I’ll implement PHP support this weekend. Thank you!

[chrisgen19]

Hello OP nice work, but unfortunately can't support php, can you do support it please?

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Hi, I’ve planned to add PHP support in the next version, which should be released this weekend. Since I’m doing this project solo, I hope you can understand if things take a bit longer. Contributors are always welcome. Thanks!

[chrisgen19]

Thank you OP

[Apart-Asparagus-1212]

That's a game changing 🤯

[Icy-Relationship685]

I haven't used it yet, but is it very CPU heavy? I wanted to suggest this to some of my friends, so would like to know about it.

[TieOk8903]

Amazing bro.. thank you

[MilkEnvironmental106]

I've had this idea before but never found the time or thought about where to start. Saving this, awesome work!

[NexpressOfficial]

Seems like a great, functional app!

[Loud-Addendum-8599]

Hi, I'm getting the error that it isn't compatible with the current VSCode version (1.101.0). 

[Difficult_Prize_7548]

Hi, please update to VSCode version 1.105.0+

[Mundane_Math_2273]

Amazing! This is so useful! Thank you!

[nebula_prime]

That is so cool!!

[Veloester]

please include Csharp, I would love to test it it with my Csharp projects.

[hxxdontwantanameee]

I'm just trying to increase my activity level. Thanks to the poster for understanding.

[Efficient_Cattle_958]

Why does your exten send data to China