🔍 Stepwise checkout.py scoring.py weights.py user.py EXPLORE MODE

🐛 Stepwise

A debugger for your codebase, powered by AI — pause, step, and ask "why?" on any piece of code.

58%
of dev time spent understanding code
3–6
months to onboard to new codebases
0
AI tools using the debugger metaphor

The Problem

Developers spend 58% of their time understanding code, not writing it. Yet every AI coding tool optimizes for generation — autocomplete, boilerplate, "build me a feature." When you face an unfamiliar codebase, you still grep, "Find References," and mentally reconstruct how things connect. AI chat doesn't help you explore — it only answers questions you already know to ask.

The Insight

Every developer already knows how to use a debugger: breakpoints, stepping, call stacks, variable inspection, watch expressions. It's a universally understood mental model for "I need to understand what's happening." No AI tool has adopted this metaphor for codebase exploration. Stepwise maps debugger concepts to static code understanding:

DebuggerStepwiseWhat it does
Breakpoint📍 PinPause on any function/line; AI loads full context
Step Into▸ Step IntoDrill into implementation, see callers/tests
Step Over▸▸ Step OverAI summarizes the body, skip known territory
Step Out◂◂ Step OutZoom back to caller — "how did I get here?"
Call Stack📞 Code TrailBreadcrumb path from entry point to current code
Variables🔍 Context InspectorType, callers, callees, git blame, test coverage
Watch🔎 Live QueriesDefine patterns; track every occurrence
Reverse Exec⏪ Time TravelReplay git history; AI narrates what changed
Console💬 Ask AnythingNatural language queries in full context

Three Modes

🔍
Explore Mode
Navigate unfamiliar code. Point at anything, ask "what does this do?" Build understanding incrementally.
🎨
Design Mode
Plan new features. Step through where it fits, what patterns to follow, what will break. AI validates against codebase patterns.
👁️
Review Mode
Understand PRs in full context. Step through diffs with AI calling out implications and missing tests.
🧠
AI-Powered
Graph-aware context assembly — not just embeddings, but structural proximity in the call/dependency graph.

Why Now?

13 AI coding tools analyzed (Cursor, Copilot, Cody, Codeium, Tabnine, Greptile, Replit, Bolt, CodeQL, Continue.dev, v0, Bloop, Windsurf) — none use the debugger metaphor. Replit has both AI chat AND a real debugger, but they're walled off from each other. The "pause and ask why" interaction simply doesn't exist anywhere.

Full PRD, competitive analysis, and market research at github.com/abster12/stepwise-debugger-mock/docs

📍 Pins 0
No pins yet. Click a line number to pin.
📞 Code Trail 1
🔍 Context Inspector
Symbol:calculate_risk_score Type:function → float File:services/risk/scoring.py Callers:checkout.py (1) Callees:_load_weights, _extract_features, _apply_decay Modified:2 weeks ago (Alice) Tests:4 passing, 1 pending Deps:numpy, models.user
🤖 Stepwise AI
Welcome to your codebase. I see you're looking at `checkout.py`. Click any line number to pin it, or click any function call to step into it. Ask me anything about what you see.
Step 1/5 You're looking at the checkout API. Click Step Into to drill into the risk scoring function.