CI Integration

NestWeaver runs in CI pipelines for automated dead code detection, PR impact analysis, and test selection. The key difference from local usage is that CI runners don’t persist daemon processes, so you need --no-daemon mode for all commands.

CI mode

Pass --no-daemon to any command, or set the environment variable. This makes NestWeaver operate directly on the database file without starting a background daemon:

# Flag
nestweaver index . --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug

# Or environment variable (applies to all commands)
export NESTWEAVER_NO_DAEMON=1
nestweaver index . --db ./nestweaver.lbug

Pre-built binaries

Download a pre-built binary from GitHub Releases. Binaries are available for Linux and macOS on both x86_64 and aarch64.

In GitHub Actions, add a setup step:

- name: Install NestWeaver
  run: |
    curl -fsSL https://github.com/Kehl-io/nestweaver/releases/latest/download/nestweaver-linux-x86_64.tar.gz \
      | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin
    nestweaver --version

You can also install via npm if you prefer:

- name: Install NestWeaver
  run: npm install -g @kehl-io/nestweaver

Index in CI

Index the repository into a database file. For monorepos or multi-repo setups, index each repo into the same database:

nestweaver index . --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug

For multi-repo projects:

nestweaver index --repo ./frontend --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug
nestweaver index --repo ./backend --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug

Useful CI checks

Dead code detection

Fail the build when unreachable symbols are detected. NestWeaver traces reachability from entry points (exports, main functions, route handlers) and reports symbols that nothing calls:

nestweaver dead-code --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug

Use this as a quality gate — if dead code is found, the command exits with a non-zero status.

PR impact analysis

Annotate pull requests with a blast radius showing which symbols, files, and tests are affected by the changes. Impact scores decay multiplicatively through edges so low-confidence paths are pruned:

nestweaver pr-impact --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug

This outputs a risk-scored summary (Low/Medium/High/Critical) that can be posted as a PR comment.

Affected test selection

Run only the tests affected by changed files instead of the full suite. NestWeaver traces the dependency graph from changed symbols to their test files:

nestweaver affected-tests --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug

Pipe the output into your test runner to skip unaffected tests and speed up CI:

nestweaver affected-tests --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug --json \
  | jq -r '.affected_tests[]' \
  | xargs pytest

Snapshots for speed

Re-indexing a large codebase on every CI run is slow. Snapshots let you build the graph once, push it to storage, and pull it in CI — skipping the index step entirely.

Build and push a snapshot (run after indexing, e.g., on main branch merges):

nestweaver snapshot build --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug
nestweaver snapshot push --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug

Pull the snapshot in CI (replaces the index step):

nestweaver pull --no-daemon --db ./nestweaver.lbug

Configure the snapshot storage backend in your instance config:

[snapshot_storage]
backend = "s3"
bucket = "my-nestweaver-snapshots"
prefix = "ci/"

Example GitHub Actions workflow

A complete workflow that installs NestWeaver, indexes the repo, checks for dead code, and posts PR impact analysis:

name: NestWeaver Analysis
on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

env:
  NESTWEAVER_NO_DAEMON: '1'

jobs:
  analyze:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0 # Full history needed for pr-impact

      - name: Install NestWeaver
        run: |
          curl -fsSL https://github.com/Kehl-io/nestweaver/releases/latest/download/nestweaver-linux-x86_64.tar.gz \
            | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin

      - name: Index repository
        run: nestweaver index . --db ./nestweaver.lbug

      - name: Dead code check
        run: nestweaver dead-code --db ./nestweaver.lbug

      - name: PR impact analysis
        run: nestweaver pr-impact --db ./nestweaver.lbug

For projects using snapshots, replace the index step with a pull:

- name: Pull snapshot
  run: nestweaver pull --db ./nestweaver.lbug

- name: Incremental re-index (changed files only)
  run: nestweaver index . --db ./nestweaver.lbug

This keeps CI fast — the snapshot provides the baseline graph and the incremental index picks up changes from the PR.