Compass is a native, local-first knowledge graph engine for source code and project artifacts. It discovers the entities in a project, records how they…

Compass documentation

Compass is a native, local-first knowledge graph engine for source code and project artifacts. It discovers the entities in a project, records how they relate, and gives people and tools a smaller, structured way to explore a large codebase.

Compass was inspired by Graphify, but the products now evolve independently. Compass has no Graphify runtime or test dependency. It includes Compass-native capabilities, such as CompassQL and versioned graph history, and its public contracts are defined by Compass documentation and native tests.

Three reader journeys through the Compass documentation

Choose your path

I am evaluating Compass

Start here if you want to understand the product before adopting it:

Getting started — install Compass, build a graph, and answer a real question.
How Compass works — understand the pipeline without needing graph-database experience.
Graph model — learn what nodes, relationships, communities, and provenance mean.
Operations — understand local execution, credentials, long-running processes, and recovery.
Compatibility and performance — inspect the published evidence.

I use or integrate Compass

Start with Getting started, then choose the task closest to yours:

Documentation map

Learn the concepts

Document	What it answers
How Compass works	How does a directory become a queryable graph?
Graph model	What do the entities and relationships mean?
Provenance	How can I judge where an edge came from?
CompassQL concepts	When should I use an exact structural query?

Complete a task

Guide	Outcome
Getting started	A working local graph and your first useful answers
Exploring a codebase	A repeatable architecture-reading workflow
Integrating Compass	Stable, machine-readable data in another tool
Assistant setup	A native Compass skill installed at the right scope
Versioned history	Immutable graphs and diffs for exact Git commits
Operations	Safe operation of long-running and optional surfaces

Copy a recipe

The cookbook index routes to:

Look up an exact contract

Reference	Contents
Commands	Command families, common inputs, output modes, and diagnostics
Configuration	Providers, environment, paths, and precedence
Outputs	`compass-out/`, graph JSON, query results, and history exports
Document formats	Markdown fields, limits, and discovery versus extraction
Framework routes	Recognized routing shapes, graph projection, and conservative boundaries
Compatibility	Compass contracts, hard cutovers, and portability
CompassQL	Canonical language and runtime contract
CompassQL support	Checked syntax and feature matrix

How these documents are written

Compass documentation uses four document types:

Concept     explains what something means and why it exists
Guide       walks through a complete task
Cookbook    solves one concrete scenario with a short recipe
Reference   states an exact interface, option, format, or limit

This separation is deliberate. A guide should not force you through an exhaustive option table, and a reference should not hide a precise contract inside a long tutorial.

Substantial pages open directly with an overview and end with related pages and a recommended next step. Small diagrams are ASCII so they remain useful in any terminal. Larger architecture diagrams are checked-in SVG files with accessible titles and descriptions.

Canonical policy and evidence

Some topics already have a single authoritative document. The learning guides summarize and link to these; they do not replace them:

If a summary and a canonical document ever disagree, follow the canonical document and open a documentation issue.

Product status in one paragraph

Compass is a Rust workspace that ships the compass executable. Structural code extraction and graph queries run locally and do not require Python, embeddings, a vector database, or runtime grammar downloads. Semantic extraction for documents and other non-code sources is optional and may contact the provider you explicitly configure. The current release packaging and platform guarantees are recorded in the compatibility ledger, not inferred from what happens to compile on one developer machine.

Next step: follow Getting started to build and query your first graph.

Compass documentation

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