mx-impact

Blast-radius analyzer for Mendix projects. See what breaks before you change anything.

Mendix's Studio Pro "Find Usages" is shallow — it misses transitive callers, widget-level bindings, and XPath filters. mx-impact reads your .mpr via mxcli and produces a focused blast-radius view of exactly what a proposed change would touch.

• A tree explorer shows you the project.
• mx-impact shows you the consequences of changing one thing inside it.

Features

• 🎯 Focused subgraph — only the elements that reference the target, laid out in concentric rings by severity.
• 📐 Safety score — one number (0–100) you can gate PRs on.
• 🔁 Transitive analysis — follows callers up through microflows and nanoflows.
• 📄 Text / JSON / SARIF output — pipe into CI, a PR comment, or Azure DevOps gates.
• 🖥️ Local web UI — exploratory mode with a blast-radius graph and break list.
• 🧪 Stub mode — develop and demo without a real .mpr.

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 18
• mxcli on your PATH
• A Mendix project (.mpr). Tested against Mendix 11.6.

mx-impact does not modify your .mpr. It is read-only. Still, close the project in Studio Pro before running any MxCLI-backed tool.

Install

npm install -g mx-impact

Or use without installing:

npx mx-impact --help

Verify the prerequisites:

mx-impact check

Quick start

CLI

# Analyze an attribute
mx-impact impact attr:Sales.Customer.Email ./MyApp.mpr

# Entity with transitive callers
mx-impact impact entity:Sales.Customer ./MyApp.mpr --transitive

# Machine-readable output for CI
mx-impact impact microflow:Sales.SUB_CalcDiscount ./MyApp.mpr \
  --format sarif --out impact.sarif

Web UI

mx-impact serve ./MyApp.mpr

Opens at http://127.0.0.1:4717. Pick any element from the catalog (or type a target) and watch the blast radius materialize.

Programmatic

import { analyzeImpact } from 'mx-impact';

const report = await analyzeImpact({
  target: 'attr:Sales.Customer.Email',
  projectPath: './MyApp.mpr',
  transitive: true,
});

console.log(report.summary);

Target syntax

<kind>:<qualified name>

entity:Module.Entity
attr:Module.Entity.Attribute
microflow:Module.MicroflowName
nanoflow:Module.NanoflowName
page:Module.PageName
enum:Module.EnumName

Severity model

| Severity | Meaning | |----------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | direct | Element references the target directly. Will break immediately. | | transitive | Reaches the target through one or more microflow/nanoflow calls. | | indirect | Same module or page flow; worth reviewing but may not break. |

Safety score

safetyScore = 100 − (5 × direct) − (2 × transitive) − (1 × indirect), clamped to [0, 100].

| Score | Badge | |---------|---------| | 80–100 | SAFE | | 50–79 | CAUTION | | 0–49 | RISKY |

CI integration

GitHub Actions:

- run: npx mx-impact impact entity:Sales.Customer ./app.mpr --format sarif --out impact.sarif
- uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
  with:
    sarif_file: impact.sarif

Azure DevOps: the SARIF output plugs directly into the SARIF viewer task Mendix Labs supports via MxCLI PR gates.

Development

git clone https://github.com/DHARSHANJ/mx-impact.git
cd mx-impact
npm install
MX_IMPACT_QUERY_MODE=stub npm start -- serve ./dummy.mpr
npm test

MX_IMPACT_QUERY_MODE=stub skips real MxCLI calls and returns fixture data — useful for UI work and demos.

Roadmap

• [ ] mx-impact propose — save refactor plans and apply them atomically
• [ ] Claude-powered fix generation for each break
• [ ] --breaks-if <change> to simulate specific type / rename / delete proposals
• [ ] Git hook: block commits whose blast radius exceeds a threshold
• [ ] VS Code extension embedding the web UI

Relation to MX Visuals

MX Visuals is an excellent project explorer — it shows you the whole map of your Mendix app. mx-impact is complementary: it's a change tool that shows only the subgraph relevant to a proposed modification, with severity coloring and a safety score. Use MX Visuals to understand a project; use mx-impact to change one safely.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Disclaimer

mx-impact is an independent open-source project, not affiliated with Mendix or Siemens. Analysis quality depends on mxcli, which is itself alpha-quality software; always work against a copy of your project.