CodeWiki
AI-powered code documentation with live previews and chat
What is CodeWiki? Complete Overview
CodeWiki is an AI-native documentation system that revolutionizes how teams document and understand code. Developed by Google, it automatically scans repositories after every commit to generate hyperlinked documentation, diagrams, and provides a Gemini-powered chat agent for instant code understanding. CodeWiki ensures documentation stays current and helps new contributors make their first commit on Day 1 while enabling senior developers to understand new libraries in minutes. It's available for public repositories with a waitlist for private repo support through the Gemini CLI extension. CodeWiki is particularly valuable for software teams, SREs, auditors, and anyone needing to quickly understand complex codebases.
CodeWiki Interface & Screenshots
CodeWiki Official screenshot of the tool interface
What Can CodeWiki Do? Key Features
Automated Documentation Generation
CodeWiki automatically scans repositories after every commit to regenerate structured documentation, ensuring all docs stay current with the codebase. This eliminates stale documentation and manual updates.
Gemini AI Chat Assistant
A built-in Gemini assistant answers natural language questions about the codebase, using the current documentation as context. This enables instant understanding of complex systems without digging through code.
Interactive Code Navigation
Every documentation element is hyperlinked to the relevant code files, functions, and diagrams, creating a seamless blend between documentation and code exploration.
Live Visual Diagrams
CodeWiki automatically generates and updates architecture, class, and sequence diagrams that reflect the current state of the repository, providing always-accurate visual representations.
Private Repository Support
Through the Gemini CLI extension (currently in waitlist), CodeWiki's powerful documentation capabilities can be extended to private or air-gapped repositories while maintaining security and compliance.
Best CodeWiki Use Cases & Applications
New Developer Onboarding
New team members can use CodeWiki to quickly understand the codebase structure, dependencies, and architecture through interactive documentation and AI chat, reducing onboarding time from weeks to days.
Code Review and Audits
Auditors and senior developers can rapidly review unfamiliar codebases by exploring automatically generated diagrams and asking the Gemini assistant specific questions about implementation details.
Open Source Contribution
Open source contributors can immediately understand project structure and coding patterns through CodeWiki's live documentation, lowering the barrier to making meaningful contributions.
Technical Documentation Maintenance
Development teams can eliminate documentation drift by relying on CodeWiki's automatic updates, ensuring that documentation always matches the current code state.
How to Use CodeWiki: Step-by-Step Guide
Connect your public repository to CodeWiki by providing the repository URL through the CodeWiki interface or API.
CodeWiki will perform an initial scan of your repository, analyzing the code structure, dependencies, and relationships between components.
Review the automatically generated documentation, which includes structured wikis, API docs, architecture diagrams, and dependency maps.
Use the Gemini chat interface to ask questions about the codebase in natural language, receiving answers based on the current documentation.
As you continue development, CodeWiki will automatically update the documentation after each commit, ensuring it always reflects the current state of your code.
CodeWiki Pros and Cons: Honest Review
Pros
Considerations
Is CodeWiki Worth It? FAQ & Reviews
Yes, CodeWiki is developed by Google and integrated with Google Cloud services, though it currently operates in public preview.
CodeWiki automatically scans your repository after every commit, regenerating documentation and diagrams to match the current code state.
Currently, CodeWiki only supports public repositories, but a Gemini CLI extension for private repos is available through a waitlist.
CodeWiki supports most major programming languages, with particularly strong support for JavaScript, Python, Java, Go, and C++.
CodeWiki is designed to complement existing documentation by providing always-current technical reference, while human-written docs remain valuable for high-level concepts and decisions.
