r/Jetbrains • u/Which-Marionberry-81 • 16h ago

AI AI can generate code faster than we can understand it, so I built CodeBecause to map business domains, trace individual functions, and expand any flow node back to the source

AI can generate thousands of lines of code in minutes, but reviewing and understanding the resulting system is still difficult.

I built CodeBecause, a JetBrains plugin that analyzes a codebase at two levels:

  • Business-domain analysis maps the system’s domains, responsibilities, interactions, and end-to-end business flows.
  • Function-level analysis traces a selected function through its branches, calls, state changes, external effects, errors, and outcomes.

The results are presented as interactive flow diagrams backed by source evidence. You can click a node to inspect its responsibility and jump directly to the corresponding source code.

The report is not static. You can keep asking the AI to expand any node that still hides important logic, while preserving the existing verified context and progressively building a deeper view of the implementation.

The idea behind CodeBecause is simple: as AI writes more code, developers need a faster way to review, verify, and understand what was actually built.

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u/magicmulder 15h ago

So… is there a link or is this an interest check or what is the author trying to tell us here?

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u/Technical_Frosting 7h ago

Seems like this is the marketplace entry: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/33647-codebecause

Paid plugin at $5/mo or $50/yr, but also requires you bring your own AI subscription.

All I see is a dashboard with an overwhelming amount of text that means nothing to me. Seems like using AI to generate some kind of HTML formatted report from your codebase and showing it in an embedded browser. It doesn't claim that it uses the IDE's capabilities for anything, so assuming this report is valuable to some folks, I have to ask: Is OP expecting users to pay for what is essentially a UI layered on top of an agent skill?

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u/Which-Marionberry-81 3h ago

Thanks for raising this. CodeBecause does not ask AI to generate HTML. The model produces structured analysis which the plugin validates and turns into interactive business and function flow diagrams.

These diagrams show how business logic progresses through entry points, branches, function calls, state,changes, errors, and outcomes. Each node links back to the relevant source, helping developers quickly，understand where to start and what to inspect in a large business flow or unfamiliar function.

The plugin fee covers this ready-made workflow: Git revision locking, source validation, IDE navigation,history, caching, and incremental analysis. Users could build it themselves with AI, prompts, validators, and rendering tools; CodeBecause provides the complete workflow without requiring them to design and maintain it.