Show HN: Automatically keep track of all features implemented in a project

Show HN: Automatically keep track of all features implemented in a project(github.com)

1 points by krzysiek 10 days ago | 2 comments

I built this because I wanted to automate my least favourite part of documentation writing - expressing at a high level what was implemented. There are a couple of situations where you could need that: - to show to the client what changed since the last update - to show to an executive, where the fucus went lately - to explain to a new team member, what the project is about

Because the report (you can see how it looks here: https://github.com/netizer/feature-ledger/blob/main/docs/cli...) is automated, I also use it as a discovery tool in projects I just started working on.

The way it works: - `ledger init` - creates a `.ledger` directory; descriptions of all new features will be stored there - `ledger bootstrap` - prints out a prompt to be used in a coding agent; it will analyse a new codebase and create the JSON files describing all features - `ledger audit` - when you usa a coding agent it will automatically keep the feature list up-to-date, audit is to discover features implemented without a coding agent - `ledger release cut --name "Release name" --date 2026-09-11` - run it after you've just shown to the client what had changed and you want to start working on a new set of features; in the new ledger you will see new features in green, updated features with blue, and deleted ones in red - `ledger build` - run it whenever you want to see the report of new features; there are 3 files generated based on JSON files describing features: a PDF for the client, FEATURES.md (the same but in an MD format), FEATURES_EXTENDED.md (the same but including implementation details - this is for the dev team)

RTMDme 10 days ago |

The “product-level memory” aspect is interesting to me. Code history can tell you what changed, but not necessarily what the product became.

I can see this becoming more valuable as coding agents make smaller, more frequent changes. At some point, someone still needs a higher-level explanation of what actually exists in the product.

Curious how you decide what qualifies as a feature versus an implementation detail.

krzysiek 10 days ago | |

This is the template for the prompt that is used here (everything below "{copy_rule}"): https://github.com/netizer/feature-ledger/blob/main/assets/B...

The core idea is identifying features where you answer "yes" to the question: "Could you demo it?"

Regarding the value of such tools when working with codebases whith heavy coding agent use - absolutely. Especially when code generated by models such as Astra can be pretty unreadable (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654229)