I built a CLI that finds dying files in your codebase

xarcho — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 02:09:28 +0000

Every codebase has files that nobody owns. Files too complex to
understand. Files last touched 3 years ago by someone who left.
They never show up in sprint planning — but they cause the most
bugs, the slowest onboarding, and the worst incidents.

I built deathbed to make them visible.

What it does

Run it inside any git repo:

pip install deathbed
cd your-project
deathbed

You get a full file health report scored across 6 metrics:

Size — lines of code
Age — days since last commit touched this file
Churn — how many times it's been modified
Complexity — cyclomatic complexity via radon
Authors — how many unique people have touched it
Tests — whether a corresponding test file exists

Each file gets a health score from 0-100 with a plain-English
diagnosis like "complexity graveyard", "legacy ghost", or
"too many cooks".

Why I built it

I kept inheriting codebases with no idea where to start.
Which files are safe to touch? Which ones will break everything?
Which ones does nobody understand anymore?

No tool answered that question simply. So I built one.

It's completely free and offline

No API key. No config file. No account. Just:

pip install deathbed

Try it on a repo you know

git clone https://github.com/pallets/flask
cd flask
deathbed

Some of the results might surprise you.

GitHub: https://github.com/NikoloziKhachiashvili/deathbed
PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/deathbed

Forem: xarcho

I built a CLI that finds dying files in your codebase

What it does

Why I built it

It's completely free and offline

Try it on a repo you know