Open-source DeepWiki alternative — generate comprehensive wiki documentation for any codebase from your terminal or browser.
The live demo is RepoWiki eating its own dog food: the wiki for this very repo, generated by repowiki scan . --site and served from GitHub Pages.
| DeepWiki | deepwiki-open | RepoWiki | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deploy | SaaS only | Docker Compose | pip install repowiki |
| Local repos | No | No | Yes |
| CLI | No | No | Yes |
| Web UI | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Export | Web only | Web only | Markdown / JSON / HTML |
| Reading guide | No | No | PageRank + guided path |
| Terminal Q&A | No | No | repowiki chat |
| Dependencies | N/A | Docker + PostgreSQL | Python + SQLite |
pip install repowiki
# set your API key (DeepSeek, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
export DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=<your-api-key>
# or
repowiki config set api_key <your-api-key>
# scan a local project
repowiki scan ./my-project
# scan a GitHub repo
repowiki scan https://github.com/pallets/flask
# scan a private GitHub repo (token never touches logs or errors)
GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_xxx repowiki scan https://github.com/acme/private-repo
# generate self-contained HTML
repowiki scan ./my-project --format html --open
# start the web interface (wheels from PyPI ship the built UI)
pip install repowiki[web]
repowiki serve ./my-project # optionally preload a projectRepoWiki respects .gitignore and .repowikiignore during scans. It also skips common local secret files such as .env, .env.local, .npmrc, .pypirc, and SSH private keys by default.
- Structured wiki — project overview, per-module docs, auto-detected architecture with Mermaid diagrams, and a PageRank "start here" reading path.
- Cross-linked pages: a backticked symbol or file path that matches another wiki page becomes a link to it, as a relative
.mdlink in Markdown and as in-page navigation in the HTML export. Fenced code blocks stay untouched, and a name defined on several pages links to the first one. - Symbol index: a global index page collects every key symbol the analysis documents, grouped by kind and then by module, with each entry linking back to the module page that owns it. A project with no documented symbols skips the page.
- Incremental re-runs: the output directory keeps a
.repowiki-state.jsonmapping each page to the inputs that generated it, so re-scanning only regenerates pages whose source changed and deletes pages of removed modules. JSON and HTML exports skip the write entirely when nothing changed. Pass--fullto force a full rebuild. Unchanged pages also skip the LLM call itself: analysis results sit in a content-keyed SQLite cache (~/.repowiki/cache.db), so a re-scan after a small edit costs no API calls for untouched modules. To auto-refresh on commit, trigger a scan from.git/hooks/post-commit(repowiki scan . --site -o docs/wiki &) or from CI on push — the caches make that cheap, so no watcher daemon is needed. - Import-aware ranking — resolves Python and JS/TS imports before ranking files, and skips minified/generated bundles so they don't burn LLM context.
- Honest coverage reporting — when the scan can't take the whole repo, it says so: the overview page and the CLI both flag partial coverage (files kept vs. candidates, oversized and excluded paths), so a wiki never quietly claims to be complete.
- Three output formats — a Markdown directory to commit, structured JSON, or a self-contained HTML file to share (diagrams included).
- Static site publishing:
repowiki scan . --sitedrops a docsify loader (index.html+.nojekyll) into the Markdown export, so the output directory can go straight onto GitHub Pages. - Web viewer + terminal chat: a three-column browser UI, or
repowiki chat .for grounded Q&A in the terminal. Chat is multi-turn: the conversation so far goes into each prompt, so follow-up questions work in both the web UI and the CLI. The built-in TF-IDF index (no embeddings service) persists across runs and a second session on an unchanged repo starts warm. - CLI-first — no Docker, no database server, no browser required.
repowiki scan . # generate wiki
repowiki scan . --full # rebuild every page, ignoring incremental state
repowiki scan . -f html --open # open in browser
repowiki scan . -l zh # Chinese output
repowiki chat . # multi-turn Q&A about the code, remembers the session
repowiki map . # ranked repo map, zero LLM calls
repowiki map . --format json # prompt-ready ranked list for agents
repowiki scan . --site # markdown export plus a GitHub Pages-ready loaderDetects Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Rust, Java, Kotlin, C/C++, C#, Ruby, PHP, Swift, and 30+ more. Any of litellm's 100+ providers works — pick one with an alias or pass it directly:
repowiki config set model deepseek # deepseek / claude / gpt / gemini / qwen / kimi / glm ...
repowiki scan . -m gpt # or pass a model directlyRepoWiki looks for config in this order:
- CLI flags (
-m,-l,-o) - Environment variables (
REPOWIKI_MODEL,REPOWIKI_API_KEY) - Config file (
~/.repowiki/config.json) - Provider-specific env vars (
DEEPSEEK_API_KEY,OPENAI_API_KEY,ANTHROPIC_API_KEY)
For private GitHub repositories, set GITHUB_TOKEN (or GH_TOKEN): the clone goes out authenticated and the token is used only inside the git invocation, never written to logs or error output.
RepoWiki/
├── src/repowiki/
│ ├── cli.py # Click CLI with scan/serve/chat/config commands
│ ├── config.py # Configuration management
│ ├── core/
│ │ ├── scanner.py # File scanning with language detection
│ │ ├── analyzer.py # Multi-step LLM analysis pipeline
│ │ ├── graph.py # Dependency graph + PageRank
│ │ ├── wiki_builder.py # Wiki page assembly
│ │ ├── rag.py # TF-IDF retrieval for Q&A
│ │ ├── cache.py # SQLite caching
│ │ └── state.py # Incremental regeneration state
│ ├── llm/
│ │ ├── client.py # litellm async wrapper
│ │ └── prompts.py # Structured prompt templates
│ ├── ingest/
│ │ ├── local.py # Local directory ingestion
│ │ └── github.py # Git clone with caching
│ ├── export/
│ │ ├── markdown.py # Markdown directory export
│ │ ├── json_export.py # JSON export
│ │ └── html.py # Self-contained HTML export
│ └── server/ # FastAPI web backend
├── frontend/ # React + Vite + TailwindCSS
├── pyproject.toml
└── LICENSE
- Scan — Walk the directory tree, filter out binaries, generated bundles, and oversized files, detect languages and entry points
- Graph — Resolve imports across 6 languages, including Python package-relative and JavaScript/TypeScript relative modules, then run PageRank to rank file importance
- Analyze — Send file tree + key files to LLM in 4 structured passes (overview, modules, architecture, reading guide)
- Cache — Store results in SQLite keyed by content hash, skip unchanged files on re-scan
- Export — Assemble wiki pages with Mermaid diagrams and source links, output in chosen format
git clone https://github.com/he-yufeng/RepoWiki.git
cd RepoWiki
# backend
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev,web]"
# frontend
cd frontend && npm install && npm run dev
# run backend
repowiki serve --port 8000Generation, the web interface, and the diagrams work, pages link to each other, re-runs only regenerate the pages whose source changed, and scan --site exports a GitHub Pages-ready site. The next step is richer diagrams:
- More diagram types — a call graph and a data-flow view alongside the dependency graph, since the analysis already walks imports and could surface more.
If RepoWiki helped you find your way around a codebase, a few other things I've built:
- CoreCoder — want to understand how a coding agent really works? Read the whole ~1k-line engine end to end, not a black box.
- FindJobs-Agent — stop sifting job boards by hand: it ranks postings against your resume and runs mock interviews.
- ContractGuard — catch the risky clauses before you sign: it reads contracts and flags the dangerous bits.
- GitSense — want to contribute to open source? It finds issues worth your time and gauges whether your PR will get merged.
- CodeABC — understand any codebase even if you don't code, built for non-programmers.
MIT