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ZigZag: AI-Friendly Code Reports in Zig

#programming #ai #zig #productivity

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ZigZag: AI-Friendly Code Reports in Zig

Introduction / Motivation

In today's AI era, with so many AI tools and AI-driven development workflows, writing clean and production-ready code can be incredibly stressful. Keeping track of code on version control platforms like GitHub is already standard practice.

However, when you ask AI about your code, it often doesn’t understand the underlying context of your codebase. This is why I built ZigZag — a tool that generates code reports using the Zig programming language.

ZigZag helps developers gain deeper insights into their codebases without navigating through thousands of files and makes AI-assisted development seamless.

While there are AI platforms for generating or analyzing code, having a tool that maintains context locally in a nicely formatted .MD file, allowing you to upload a block of code with a single click, feels refreshingly different.

Features

ZigZag handles all the hassle when working with files:

  • Smart file reading strategies optimized for different file sizes
  • Persistent caching system with automatic validation and atomic updates
  • Parallel processing with configurable thread pooling
  • Cross-platform compatibility
  • Multi-path support for processing multiple directories simultaneously
  • File ignoring patterns for flexible exclusion rules

Installation / Getting Started

ZigZag is built on Zig version 0.15.2, the latest version at the time of writing.

Building from source 

git clone https://github.com/LegationPro/zigzag.git
cd zigzag
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast
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The executable will be available at: zig-out/bin/zigzag

Basic Usage

Usage is straightforward:

zigzag --help
zigzag --path ./src1 --path ./src2 --ignore .git,node_modules --timezone -5
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Why Zig?

Zig may not be a fully stable programming language, but it is already being adopted in large codebases such as:

  • Bun – an incredibly fast JavaScript runtime

  • Ghostty – a GPU-accelerated terminal

Zig exceeds at:

  • Modern language features

    • Low-level memory access
    • C interoperability
    • Simple and intuitive build process

Thank You for Reading! 🙏

Thank you for taking the time to read this article! I hope it gave you a clear idea of how ZigZag can simplify working with your codebase and enhance your AI-assisted development workflow.

If you’d like to try it out, contribute, or share feedback, check out the repository: GitHub - LegationPro/zigzag

Happy coding, and have an amazing day! 🚀

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