# willcrichton/flowistry

Flowistry is an IDE plugin for Rust that helps you focus on relevant code.

Repository: https://github.com/willcrichton/flowistry
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/flowistry
Homepage: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=wcrichton.flowistry
Language: Rust
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: rust, vscode, dataflow, static-analysis
Last push: 2026-05-22T14:54:32+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 63/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 83, release rhythm 16, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2003, "days_push": 103, "days_rel": 345, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 1}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3071, forks 64 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:41.593817+00:00)

## What it is
Flowistry is a Rust IDE plugin (VS Code extension plus rustc plugin) that performs modular information flow analysis to determine which code can affect which. Its 'focus mode' fades out code unrelated to the selected variable or expression, aiding comprehension of large functions.

## Use cases
- understand which parts of a Rust function affect a given variable
- read and comprehend large unfamiliar Rust codebases
- filter out irrelevant code while debugging
- analyze dataflow and dependencies between expressions in Rust
- identify the influence of a function argument
- explore information flow in compiler internals

## When to choose
- you work in Rust and struggle to trace influence between variables in large functions
- you want IDE-integrated static dataflow analysis for code reading
- you need a research-backed information flow tool for Rust

## When to avoid
- you need analysis across nested functions, closures, or async code
- your code relies heavily on interior mutability
- you use an IDE other than VS Code or need language-agnostic support

## Facets
- artifact type: plugin
- maturity: active
- function: linter, developer-tools, editor
- domain: developer-tools, programming-languages, parsers
- platform: rust, editor-plugin, cross-platform
- tags: information-flow, dataflow-analysis, vscode-extension, rust-analyzer-companion, code-comprehension, focus-mode

## Member repositories
- willcrichton/flowistry (main) score 63

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:41.593817+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:28:01.987832+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/willcrichton/flowistry (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:41.593817+00:00, sha 3cfe48530937)
  - homepage: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=wcrichton.flowistry (fetched 2026-08-29T09:43:19.513100+00:00, sha 64187e7be9bc)
  - registry_crates: https://crates.io/api/v1/crates/flowistry (fetched 2026-08-29T09:43:19.516292+00:00, sha 4c8f462a5519)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.