depwire diff — structural diff between two git commits, not just line diff (v1.7.0 of Depwire)
Quick update on the open source project I maintain.
Shipped a new CLI command today: depwire diff <commit-a> <commit-b>.
Git diff shows lines. depwire diff shows what changed in the dependency graph.
You give it two refs (branches, tags, commit hashes, HEAD~N, whatever git accepts). It builds the deterministic dependency graph for each, compares them, and tells you:
- Symbols added, removed, modified
- Edges added, removed
- Blast radius (files transitively affected)
- Health score delta with grade change
- Security findings diff (new findings introduced, existing findings fixed)
Pure graph comparison. No LLM. No embeddings. No regex pattern matching. Same commits always produce the same diff.
Designed to be safe with your repo state — checks out commits temporarily, stashes uncommitted changes, restores everything on completion or failure. Try/finally guarantees cleanup even when something errors out.
Use cases I built it for:
- Reviewing AI agent pull requests — the agent does not know what it did structurally; this gives you the answer
- Selective CI — pipe the blast radius JSON into your test selector, only run tests for affected code paths
- Debugging release regressions — diff the last-good commit against the broken one, see what structural changes shipped
- Multi-agent attribution — two agents on the same branch, see whose work touched which symbols
12th CLI command in Depwire, paired with verify_change for pre/post action workflows.
Sample output on Depwire’s own codebase (v1.5.0 vs v1.6.0):
Depwire diff: v1.5.0..v1.6.0
Symbols
+ 114 added
- 66 removed
~ 47 modified
Edges
+ 31 added
- 9 removed
Blast radius: 4 files affected
Health score: 67 → 67 [D → D]
Security: 1 new finding / 1 fixed
That accurately describes what shipped in v1.6.0 — a new CLI command with its types and options, plus internal refactoring.
Install: npm install -g depwire-cli@1.7.0 Repo: github.com/depwire/depwire
Works with any MCP client via the standard MCP tools, too. v1.7.0 is the CLI command release; an MCP tool wrapper with the same logic could be included in a future release if there is demand.
Feedback welcome.