Comparison
| repomap | GitNexus | Serena | claude-context | Aider repo map | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licence | MIT | PolyForm Noncommercial | MIT | MIT | Apache-2.0 (inside Aider) |
| Install | npx … setup, one native binary, or a one-click .mcpb | npx, Node | Python + language servers | Vector DB + embedding API key | Part of Aider |
| Network / API key | None (model downloaded once) | None for the graph | None | Required | None |
| Call + import + inheritance graph | ✅ tree-sitter | ✅ tree-sitter | via LSP | — | tags + ranking |
Change impact incl. git diff | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — |
| Call path between symbols | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — |
| Search | symbol names + BM25 + local code embeddings over AST chunks | ✅ | symbol lookup | semantic (embeddings) | — |
| Graph UI | ✅ local + static HTML export | ✅ in browser | — | — | — |
| Communities / modules | ✅ Louvain | ✅ | — | — | — |
| Edits code | — | — | ✅ | — | ✅ |
| Engine | Rust | TypeScript | Python | TypeScript | Python |
When to choose something else. Use Serena for LSP-exact rename and refactor edits. Use claude-context if you already run a vector database and a hosted embedding model and want a large transformer model; repomap's static model runs on any CPU with no service. GitNexus adds an LLM chat over its graph, but its licence rules out commercial use.
Why repomap. It needs no setup and runs on any machine. It answers the questions agents actually ask (where, what, how it connects, what breaks) with file:line citations and few tokens, and it produces a map you can show your team. The licence lets you use it at work.