Solutions
Know what breaks before you change it.
Every file in your codebase has a blast radius — the set of files that break if it changes. Axiom Refract computes this for every file, automatically, using BFS traversal of the actual dependency graph.
Blast radius, defined.
The blast radius of a file is the set of forward dependents — every file that imports it, plus every file that imports those files, and so on through the dependency chain. It answers a simple question: if this file has a breaking change, what else breaks?
Axiom Refract computes blast radius using breadth-first search (BFS) traversal of the dependency graph. Starting from a target file, the algorithm walks outward through every file that depends on it, layer by layer, up to a configurable depth (default: 3 levels, maximum: 5).
The result isn't an estimate. It's a complete enumeration of affected files, organized by dependency depth, with the total count and affected architectural zones.
Two directions of impact.
Forward Dependents
“What breaks if this changes?”
Files that depend on the target file, directly or transitively. This is the blast radius — the downstream cascade. A file with 50 forward dependents is a file where every change needs careful testing.
Direct Dependencies
“What does this rely on?”
Files that the target file imports. These are its upstream dependencies — the foundation it builds on. If any of these change, the target file may need to adapt. Understanding both directions gives you the full risk picture.
Where blast radius changes the decision.
Pre-Refactor Risk Assessment
Before touching a core module, know exactly how many files depend on it — directly and transitively. A file with 3 direct dependents and 40 transitive dependents is a very different refactoring risk than one with 3 and 0.
Pull Request Review
When a PR modifies a file, the blast radius tells the reviewer the maximum scope of impact. It turns “this looks fine” into “this file affects 27 other files across 2 zones — let's test accordingly.”
Incident Post-Mortems
After an outage, blast radius data explains why a change in one service cascaded to three others. The dependency chain is already mapped — you don't have to reconstruct it under pressure.
Migration Planning
Moving from one framework to another? Blast radius analysis shows you which files are safe to migrate first (low blast radius, few dependents) and which need to be migrated last (high blast radius, many dependents).
Available everywhere you need it.
Blast radius data is available through Axiom Refract's interactive viewer, REST API, and native MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration. Your AI coding tools can query blast radius before suggesting changes. Your CI pipeline can flag high-blast-radius files in pull requests.
The data is computed once during analysis and queryable instantly — no re-scanning needed. Ask for any file's blast radius and get the answer in milliseconds.
# MCP tool call
get_blast_radius(file_path="src/core/auth.ts", depth=3)
# Returns
forward_dependents: 47 files · direct_dependencies: 8 files · affected_zones: 3
See the blast radius of every file in your codebase.
Upload your repository. Get a complete impact map — forward dependents, dependency depth, affected zones — for every file in your system.