Morgan Lunt 1c4a5cfded
code-modernization: interactive topology map, preflight command, persona flows
modernize-map previously rendered the call graph and data lineage as
static Mermaid diagrams, which become unreadable once a node has ~10+
edges — exactly the shape of real legacy systems. It now builds an
interactive viewer from a shipped template (assets/topology-viewer.html):
a zoomable circle-pack of domains/modules sized by LOC, rendered to
canvas with level-of-detail reveal, dependency edges with per-kind
toggles, search with fly-to, a per-node detail sidebar, and a flow
walkthrough mode. Small domain-level .mmd exports remain for docs.

- topology.json now has a documented schema (hierarchy + edges + entry
  points + observations + flows) consumed by the viewer
- map traces 2-4 business flows anchored to personas (claimant,
  operator, auditor), each step in plain business language mapped to
  the modules that implement it; the viewer plays them as numbered
  paths
- brief gains a Business Walkthroughs section connecting each persona
  flow to the phase that replaces it
- new modernize-preflight command: detects the stack, checks analysis
  tooling, smoke-compiles a real source file with the legacy toolchain,
  inventories missing copybooks/descriptors/binary-only artifacts, and
  writes a per-command readiness verdict
- transform now verifies legacy + target toolchains before its plan
  gate instead of failing at test time
- README: commands updated, optional-tooling section reframed as 'what
  to give Claude'
2026-06-09 08:48:04 -07:00

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description argument-hint
Dependency & topology mapping — call graphs, data lineage, batch flows, rendered as navigable diagrams <system-dir>

Build a dependency and topology map of legacy/$1 and render it visually.

The assessment gave us domains. Now go one level deeper: how do the pieces connect? This is the map an engineer needs before touching anything.

What to produce

Write a one-off analysis script (Python or shell — your choice) that parses the source under legacy/$1 and extracts the four datasets below. Three principles apply across stacks; getting them wrong produces a misleading map:

  1. Edges live in two places — direct calls in source, and dispatcher/ router calls whose targets are variables (config tables, route maps, dependency injection, dynamic dispatch). Resolve variables against config before declaring an edge unresolvable.
  2. The code↔storage join is usually external configuration, not source — job/deployment descriptors map logical names to physical stores.
  3. Entry points usually live in deployment config, not source — without parsing it, every top-level module looks unreachable.

Extract:

  • Program/module call graph — direct calls (CALL, method invocations, import/require) and dispatcher calls (EXEC CICS LINK/XCTL, DI container wiring, framework routing, reflection/factory). Resolve variable call targets against route tables, copybooks, config, or constant pools.
  • Data dependency graph — which modules read/write which data stores, joined through the relevant config: SELECT…ASSIGN TO ↔ JCL DD (batch COBOL), EXEC CICS READ/WRITE…FILE() ↔ CSD DEFINE FILE (CICS online), EXEC SQL table refs (embedded SQL), ORM annotations/mappings (Java/.NET), model files (Node/Python/Ruby). Include UI/screen bindings (BMS maps, JSPs, templates) — they're dependencies too.
  • Entry points — whatever the stack's outermost invoker is, read from where it's defined: JCL EXEC PGM= and CICS CSD DEFINE TRANSACTION (mainframe), web.xml/route annotations/route files (web), main()/argv parsing (CLI), queue/scheduler subscriptions (event-driven).
  • Dead-end candidates — modules with no inbound edges. Only meaningful once all the entry-point and call-edge types above are in the graph. Suppress the dead claim for anything that could be the target of an unresolved dynamic call. A grep-only graph will mark most dispatcher-driven modules (CICS programs, Spring controllers, ORM-bound DAOs) dead when they aren't.

If the source is fixed-column (COBOL columns 872, RPG, etc.), slice the code area and strip comment lines before regex matching, or you'll match sequence numbers and commented-out code.

Save the script as analysis/$1/extract_topology.py (or .sh) so it can be re-run and audited. Have it write a machine-readable analysis/$1/topology.json and print a human summary. Run it; show the summary (cap at ~200 lines for very large estates).

topology.json must follow this schema — it feeds the interactive viewer:

{
  "system": "<display name>",
  "root": {
    "id": "sys", "name": "<system>", "kind": "system",
    "children": [
      { "id": "dom:<domain>", "name": "<Domain>", "kind": "domain",
        "children": [
          { "id": "<MODULE>", "name": "<MODULE>", "kind": "module",
            "language": "cobol", "loc": 1234, "file": "src/MODULE.cbl" }
        ] },
      { "id": "dom:data", "name": "Data stores", "kind": "domain",
        "children": [
          { "id": "ds:<NAME>", "name": "<NAME>", "kind": "datastore" }
        ] }
    ]
  },
  "edges": [
    { "source": "<id>", "target": "<id>", "kind": "call" }
  ],
  "entryPoints": ["<id>", "..."],
  "observations": ["<architect observation>", "..."],
  "flows": [
    { "name": "<business flow>", "persona": "<who experiences it>",
      "description": "<one sentence, plain language>",
      "steps": [
        { "label": "<business-language step>", "nodes": ["<id>", "<id>"] }
      ] }
  ]
}
  • Group leaf modules under domain containers (use the domains from /modernize-assess if available). Leaf kinds: module, datastore, job, screen. loc drives circle size — include it for modules.
  • Edge kinds: call (direct), dispatch (dynamic/router), read, write. Every edge endpoint must be a leaf id that exists in the tree.
  • observations: 37 architect observations — tight coupling clusters, single points of failure, service-extraction candidates, data stores with too many writers.
  • flows is the persona walkthrough section — see below.

Persona flows

Trace 24 end-to-end business flows, each anchored to a persona — the people who experience the system, not the people who maintain it (e.g. for a benefits system: the claimant, the caseworker, the auditor; for billing: the customer, the billing operator). For each flow:

  • name + one-sentence description in plain business language — something a steering committee member relates to ("a claimant files a weekly claim"), not a data-flow label ("CLM batch ingest").
  • steps: 38 steps, each with a business-language label and the nodes (programs + data stores) that implement that step, in execution order.

This is the bridge between the technical map and non-technical stakeholders: the same diagram answers "which program does X" for engineers and "what happens when someone files a claim" for everyone else.

Render

analysis/$1/TOPOLOGY.html is an interactive map: a zoomable circle-pack of the whole system (domains as containers, modules sized by LOC) with dependency edges, search, per-node detail sidebar, edge-kind toggles, and a flow-walkthrough mode that plays each persona flow as a numbered path. Build it from the template that ships with this plugin — do not hand-write the viewer:

python3 - "$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/assets/topology-viewer.html" analysis/$1 <<'EOF'
import json, sys
tpl_path, out_dir = sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2]
tpl = open(tpl_path).read()
data = json.dumps(json.load(open(f"{out_dir}/topology.json")))
html = tpl.replace("/*__TOPOLOGY_DATA__*/ null", "/*__TOPOLOGY_DATA__*/ " + data)
open(f"{out_dir}/TOPOLOGY.html", "w").write(html)
print(f"wrote {out_dir}/TOPOLOGY.html ({len(html):,} bytes)")
EOF

The viewer loads d3 from a CDN, so opening it needs network access; the rest is self-contained. If the data injection marker is missing from the output, the template was not found — check $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT.

Mermaid stays for small, exportable diagrams. Generate standalone .mmd files for reuse in docs and PRs — but keep each under ~40 edges; collapse to domain level if the full graph is bigger (dense Mermaid becomes unreadable, which is exactly what the interactive map is for):

  • analysis/$1/call-graph.mmd — domain-level graph TD, entry points highlighted
  • analysis/$1/data-lineage.mmdgraph LR, programs → data stores, read vs write marked
  • analysis/$1/critical-path.mmdflowchart TD of the primary flow from flows, annotated with p50/p99 wall-clock if telemetry is available (see /modernize-assess Step 4)

Present

Tell the user to open analysis/$1/TOPOLOGY.html in a browser, and to try: search for a module, click it to see its connections, and pick a persona flow from the walkthrough dropdown.