Sep-03-2025, 08:37 PM
Hi All,
I'm hoping this is a good forum to ask this. As I've said elsewhere, long time python user (pre 1.0), but only serious recently and completely fresh to the forums. One thing I find lacking in my personal eco-system of python is a simple way to browse multiple projects's classes and methods for reuse. I have pycharm and it's navigation within a project, but at a meta level, not so much. I've seen some good tooling (lightweight, language-native, discoverable, etc), so I have been working on a project to both extend my programming skills with python, fill the gap I perceive, and leverage chat in the process.
The idea is a lightweight Python Object Browser (pob): a REPL where I can point it at a project folder, and it’ll scan out the classes, methods, and docstrings into a catalog. From there I can explore across projects, query class info, see methods, grab docstrings, and eventually even pull up code snippets. It’s meant to be simple, language-native, and handy for reuse without needing a full IDE context. My approach is to build a catalog with ast instead of runtime introspection, so it stays lightweight, works without imports, and won’t blow up on missing deps. The REPL gives quick commands for listing classes, docs, and methods across projects, making it a practical meta-browser for code reuse.
If you're familiar with LXR for c and h cross refernces or ri for ruby, this is sorta along those lines. It's a very lightweight repl for doing inspection of modules and whatnot - point it at a codebase and it walks the path, building an inspectable model of the code...
Thanks,
Will
I'm hoping this is a good forum to ask this. As I've said elsewhere, long time python user (pre 1.0), but only serious recently and completely fresh to the forums. One thing I find lacking in my personal eco-system of python is a simple way to browse multiple projects's classes and methods for reuse. I have pycharm and it's navigation within a project, but at a meta level, not so much. I've seen some good tooling (lightweight, language-native, discoverable, etc), so I have been working on a project to both extend my programming skills with python, fill the gap I perceive, and leverage chat in the process.
The idea is a lightweight Python Object Browser (pob): a REPL where I can point it at a project folder, and it’ll scan out the classes, methods, and docstrings into a catalog. From there I can explore across projects, query class info, see methods, grab docstrings, and eventually even pull up code snippets. It’s meant to be simple, language-native, and handy for reuse without needing a full IDE context. My approach is to build a catalog with ast instead of runtime introspection, so it stays lightweight, works without imports, and won’t blow up on missing deps. The REPL gives quick commands for listing classes, docs, and methods across projects, making it a practical meta-browser for code reuse.
If you're familiar with LXR for c and h cross refernces or ri for ruby, this is sorta along those lines. It's a very lightweight repl for doing inspection of modules and whatnot - point it at a codebase and it walks the path, building an inspectable model of the code...
Thanks,
Will