intentdiff

intentdiff is a structure-aware Git diff for code review. It helps you see what actually changed by separating formatting noise, moved code, probable renames, import reorders, comment/doc edits, and meaningful edits.

This npm package provides the intentdiff command for JavaScript/TypeScript developers who prefer npm-based installation.

Install

npm install -g intentdiff
intentdiff --help

This package is currently a lightweight installer shim. On first run it installs the native Rust CLI with:

cargo install intentdiff --locked

Requirements:

• Node.js 18+
• Rust/Cargo available on PATH, unless INTENTDIFF_BINARY points to a preinstalled native binary

If you already installed the native binary:

INTENTDIFF_BINARY=/path/to/intentdiff intentdiff --help

Quick start

# unstaged Git changes
intentdiff

# staged changes
intentdiff --staged

# compare revisions
intentdiff main...HEAD
intentdiff HEAD~1 HEAD

# direct file comparison
intentdiff old.ts new.ts

# machine-readable output
intentdiff --format json

# CI-style check
intentdiff --check --meaningful-only

Why use it?

Normal diffs show changed text. intentdiff tries to classify review intent:

• formatting_only
• comment_only
• import_reorder
• moved_unchanged
• moved_modified
• probable_rename
• literal_changed
• operator_changed
• textual_change
• binary_change
• unknown

It intentionally avoids unsafe claims like “no behavioral change” unless a future verification subsystem proves that under explicit assumptions.

Example

No meaningful syntax-level changes detected.

Summary
  3 files changed
  0 meaningful edits
  2 formatting-only changes
  1 unchanged code moves

Run with --show-noise to inspect formatting changes.

Language support

v0.1 focuses on a practical vertical slice:

• Rust
• Python
• JavaScript
• TypeScript / TSX
• JSON
• YAML
• TOML
• Markdown

Unsupported or malformed files fall back to token or normalized textual comparison. Changes are not silently dropped because parsing failed.

Privacy and safety

By default, intentdiff:

• makes no network requests;
• collects no telemetry;
• does not execute project code;
• does not run formatters or external tools automatically.

The npm shim may invoke Cargo to install the Rust binary. The core CLI remains local-first.

More information

• GitHub: https://github.com/harivilasp/intentdiff
• crates.io: https://crates.io/crates/intentdiff
• npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/intentdiff

Current limitation

This npm package is a shim in v0.1, not a bundled native binary package. Prebuilt platform binaries are planned.