footprintjs

The flowchart pattern for software — systems that explain themselves.

→ footprintjs.github.io

A flowchart is how a person draws a system: a box for each step, an arrow for what happens next. footprintjs makes your code be that flowchart — so the thing that runs is the thing you read, and every run records why it did what it did.

One pattern, all the way up the stack: from a backend pipeline to an AI agent.

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The ecosystem — as its own flowchart

flowchart TD
    F["footprintjs<br/>core engine"]
    A["agentfootprint<br/>agentic framework"]
    E["Explainable UI<br/>for footprintjs"]
    L["Lens<br/>for agentfootprint"]
    T["Thinking UI<br/>role replay"]

    F -->|powers| A
    F -->|renders| E
    A -->|renders| L
    A -->|replays| T

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Project	Role	Links
footprintjs	the flowchart pattern for backend code	home · repo · npm
agentfootprint	AI agents that trace every LLM call back to its cause	home · docs · repo · npm
Explainable UI	visualize a footprintjs run	demo · repo · npm
Lens	debug an agentfootprint run	repo · npm · demo soon
Thinking UI	replay an agent run for non-developers	demo · repo · npm

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Principles

1. Collect at traversal time. Reads, writes, and decisions are captured structurally as the run executes — no manual logging.
2. One canonical footprint. The trace is the execution record — built inline, never rebuilt after the fact.
3. You choose the lens. Metrics, narrative, visualization, agent debugging — every tool composes on the same record.

Inline recording is truth. Post-processing is reconstruction.

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Built for agents

The hardest question in an agentic system is why did it do that? — which context, which tool, which decision led to the output. The flowchart pattern answers it by construction: agentfootprint is the pattern's first real implementation, and the rest of the stack renders and replays that record for engineers and non-developers alike.

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_{This repo is the source of footprintjs.github.io — a static, no-build page. Edit, commit, push to main; GitHub Pages rebuilds.}

_{open source · MIT · © 2024–present Sanjay Krishna Anbalagan}