The latest articles on DEV Community by Nikita Minakov (@neracu1). https://dev.to/neracu1 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4168883%2Fc127fd30-7a27-4542-b766-2d20f468d65e.jpg https://dev.to/neracu1 en Nikita Minakov Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:53:19 +0000 https://dev.to/neracu1/i-kept-finding-the-same-mess-in-every-vibe-coded-repo-so-i-built-a-cli-to-catch-it-before-i-do-15bh https://dev.to/neracu1/i-kept-finding-the-same-mess-in-every-vibe-coded-repo-so-i-built-a-cli-to-catch-it-before-i-do-15bh <p>I freelance. Half my work lately is taking over projects built with AI tools like Cursor, Claude, Codex. Clients ship fast, then hit a wall and need a real developer.</p> <p>Every single time I open one of these repos, the first two hours look the same:</p> <ul> <li>scroll through git history trying to understand what happened</li> <li>grep for hardcoded API keys and secrets</li> <li>figure out what stack is actually being used vs what the package.json claims</li> <li>find the TODOs nobody tracked</li> <li>check if there are tests (usually no)</li> </ul> <p>I did this manually maybe 15 times before I got annoyed enough to automate it.</p> <p><strong>What it does</strong></p> <p><code>rebrief</code> scans a repo and spits out a single <code>REBRIEF.md</code> file with:</p> <ul> <li>stack detection</li> <li>filtered git history (the signal, not every commit)</li> <li>a risk map</li> <li>secrets detection</li> <li>tech debt and TODO list</li> <li>test coverage summary </li> </ul> <div class="highlight js-code-highlight"> <pre class="highlight shell"><code>pip <span class="nb">install </span>rebrief rebrief scan <span class="nb">.</span> </code></pre> </div> <p>You get one document instead of two hours of archaeology.</p> <p><strong>Why not just ask the AI tool that built it</strong></p> <p>Because by the time a human dev gets involved, the context is gone. The founder who vibe-coded it doesn't know what questions to ask. The dev taking over doesn't trust a summary written by the same tool that may have introduced the mess. <code>rebrief</code> reads the actual code, not a chat log.</p> <p>It also works in a few other modes if that's useful to you:</p> <ul> <li>MCP server mode, so an AI agent can query the report directly</li> <li>scan a remote repo by URL, no clone needed</li> <li>chat mode over the generated report</li> <li>interactive HTML output, or XML if you need it machine-readable</li> </ul> <p><strong>State of the project</strong></p> <p>It's open source, live on PyPI and GitHub, past v0.3.2. Built it because I needed it myself, not because I had a grand plan. Still rough in places. I'm looking for people who actually run it on a real repo and tell me where it breaks.</p> <p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/neracu/rebrief" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://github.com/neracu/rebrief</a><br> Install: <code>pip install rebrief</code></p> <p>If you've ever inherited a vibe-coded project, or built one and need to hand it off, I'd genuinely like to know if this saves you the two hours it used to cost me.</p> automation cli softwaredevelopment tools