Introduction to Trace

Trace is a developer tool that turns your Next.js and Node.js codebases into living architectural maps. Stop guessing how services connect, and stop maintaining stale Postman collections. With a single CLI command, Trace statically analyzes your repository and draws the connections for you.

How It Works

The Trace CLI uses Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) parsing to statically analyze your codebase. It looks for:

  • ◈
    API Endpoints: Next.js App Router, Express, and standard Node HTTP handlers.
  • ◈
    Outbound Calls: Identifies fetch(), axios, Prisma, TRPC, and GraphQL queries.
  • ◈
    Data Edges: Maps how data flows from frontend components (like Client Components or Server Actions) into your backend API routes, and then out to external services like Stripe or PostgreSQL.

Security & Privacy First

Trace works entirely through static analysis. We never execute your code, we never see your environment variables, and we never send your source code to our servers. The CLI only sends a lightweight JSON schema containing file paths, route names, and HTTP methods to render the visual graph.