Impact Analysis

Find everything that depends on a service before you change it.

Changing a core service without knowing its dependents turns a contained refactor into a cascade of broken builds. This guide shows you how to map the full blast radius of any service change before touching a single line of code.

Before you begin

• Your repository is connected and indexed in Potpie (how to connect a repo)
• You know the name of the service or interface you want to change

Run the analysis

1. Open Ask on your codebase

   Go to Potpie → Ask and select your repository.

2. Ask about dependencies

   Describe the service you want to change and ask what depends on it:

       What depends on PaymentService and what breaks if I change its interface?
   

   Ask traverses the knowledge graph outward from the target service, mapping every dependent function, class, and module across the repository.

3. Review the dependency map

   Ask returns:

   • Every class, function, and module that calls or imports PaymentService
   • Each call site with its exact file path and line number
   • Transitive dependencies that would be affected by an interface change

Results

Once you have the dependency map, you have two paths:

Proceed manually by updating each call site yourself using the file paths and line numbers, knowing nothing is missed.

Hand off to Build by pasting the dependency list into a Build conversation. Build uses the same map to generate a spec and a diff across every affected file simultaneously.

Try it on your codebase

→ Explore your codebase with Ask