google/tangent

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: archived

Adoption not part of the score

2328 stars · 432 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Tangent is a Python library for automatic differentiation that works by source-to-source transformation: it reads your Python function's source code, transforms its AST, and emits readable Python derivative code. It is compatible with TensorFlow Eager and NumPy and is aimed at researchers and students who want to inspect and debug generated gradient code.

Use cases

• compute gradients of Python functions with readable generated code
• debug automatic differentiation output step by step
• learn how automatic differentiation works by reading derivative code
• differentiate NumPy and TensorFlow Eager code ahead of time
• generate derivative source code for research experiments

When to choose

• you need to read, inspect, or debug the generated derivative code
• you want ahead-of-time autodiff on plain Python source
• you're teaching or studying how gradients are computed

When to avoid

• you need production-grade, actively maintained autodiff - use PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow
• you need full Python language coverage or high performance
• you can't tolerate experimental APIs and possible breaking changes

Facets

library · maturity experimental

machine-learning compiler parser developer-tools machine-learning deep-learning compilers python cross-platform automatic-differentiation autodiff source-to-source source-code-transformation gradients debuggable tensorflow numpy algorithms

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="google/tangent")