Repo Bus-Factor Scanner

Scan Git history to surface code only one person understands

Problem

Engineering teams worry that critical code is known by only one person and will be lost if they leave. Someone on HN built checkOwners, which analyzes Git history to find experts, stale ownership files, and knowledge bottlenecks—showing a real pain point with early validation.

Solution

A local-first CLI/dashboard: analyze commit history to identify true experts per module, knowledge concentration, and stale ownership; generate risk reports and suggest docs or pairing.

Users

Engineering managers, tech leads, platform/DevOps teams, due-diligence investors or acquirers

MVP

Import Git repos and parse history; compute knowledge concentration by file/directory; flag high-risk modules owned by one person; export shareable HTML/PDF reports; run fully locally with no code upload

Revenue

Open-source core + team subscription (collaboration, trends, CI integration); one-time desktop license; on-prem enterprise license

Why now

Remote work and layoffs amplify knowledge-concentration risk, and AI-generated code blurs ownership; local-only analysis avoids privacy concerns and suits an indie open-source wedge