Projects and code

Repositories

Connect the GitHub repositories a product is built in, and chat, the second reader and the UI sketches can read how it works today. Walden only reads your code. It never changes it.

Before you start

Repositories belong to a project. An idea reads its project’s; an idea in no project reads none. See Projects.
Editors attach repositories and change their settings. Everyone in the workspace can see which are attached.
Walden reaches GitHub through its GitHub App, which can only read. Whoever controls the GitHub account (you, or an owner of the organization) installs it.

Attach a repository

Open the project. In Project actions (…) at the top right, choose Project settings, then Repositories.
Choose Attach a repository.
If Walden isn’t installed on your GitHub account yet, choose Install on GitHub, pick which repositories it may see, and you come straight back. If it’s already installed for another of your workspaces, choose Connect an existing install instead.
Pick the repository from the list. An archived one can’t be attached.

Missing one? The app only sees the repositories chosen when it was installed. Add or change repositories on GitHub lets you add more there. Once a repository is attached, the project’s page says so under its name.

More than one repository

A project can have up to 5 repositories, kept in the order you attached them: the web app, the API and a shared design system, say. Add a repository attaches another, and the line beside it says how many more you can add. Whatever reads code reads every repository whose switch is on.

Say what’s in each

Under each repository, What’s in it takes one line, up to 120 characters, on what the repository holds. It tells chat, the reader and the sketches where to look. It’s saved when you leave the field.

Let Walden read the code

Each repository has its own switch: Let the reader, chat and UI sketches see this code. It starts off, and while it’s off no code leaves GitHub. Switched on, Walden makes a digest of the repository (its file tree, routes and data schema) and makes it again when the default branch changes. Once it’s on, three things read it:

Second reader: Gets the digest, so its questions are about your codebase. See The second reader.
Chat: Gets the digest, and reads the files you pick by name. With none picked, it reads the file names, picks the files that matter, and reads only those in full. Under each answer, Read 2 files lists what it read.
UI sketches: Each place in a flow starts from its real screen in your code. See Sketching the screens.

Files are read from the default branch when they’re needed, and never kept. Nothing else reads the code.

Pick files in chat

With the switch on, type @ in the chat box, or use the file button beside it, to list files by name: the idea’s own files first, then the repositories’, the likeliest at the top. Up to 8 in all. A file you add stays in that chat until you take it off, and is read again with each message.

Some files aren’t offered: secrets, files that aren’t text, and what a tool made, like lockfiles, builds and generated code. A file over 1 MB is listed but can’t be picked. See Chat.

When the link breaks

If the app is uninstalled or suspended on GitHub, or the repository is taken out of the app’s selection or deleted, the repository says why, with Reconnect. The project and its ideas are untouched. Reconnected, it keeps its place and its line, and Walden reads it again.

Detach a repository

Detach takes it off the project, and nothing reads it from then on. Undo in the message that follows puts it back where it was, with its line.

With coding agents

When your engineering team hands an idea to a coding agent, the agent works in the repository itself. Where the project has more than one, the idea it reads says where it’s built: each repository with your line about it, and which one the agent is in. The agent asks whoever runs it to open the others in the same session, and starts each task’s title with its repository. See Coding agents.