[skydhash]

> taking an old and badly-documented codebase and answering questions like "where does this variable come from, and what are its ultimate consumers?"

Why do you even need an LLM for this? Code is formal notation, it’s not magic. Unless the code is obfuscated, even bad code is pretty clean on what they’re doing and how various symbols are created and used. What is not clear is “why” and the answer is often a business or a technical decision.

[signatoremo]

Once you are dealing with legacy codebase older than you, with very little comments and confusing documentation, you'd understand that LLM is god send for untangling the mess and troubleshooting issues.

[simonw]

> Why do you even need an LLM for this?

Once you get above a few hundred thousand lines of legacy undocumented code having a good LLM to help dig through it is really useful.