Learnlance

Learnlance is an open-source Python CLI tool that hooks into AI coding agents and quietly extracts transferable programming concepts from the code they generate, building a persistent, interactive knowledge graph over time. It is MIT-licensed and available on GitHub under the aeroscissorz account, with zero third-party dependencies by design so hooks run reliably wherever an agent launches them.

What It Is

Learnlance sits between you and your AI coding agent — Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot (CLI, cloud, or VS Code), Command Code, Kiro, Gemini CLI, or Antigravity — and after every turn that writes or edits code, it runs a background pipeline. That pipeline pulls out the generated code, asks an LLM "what transferable concepts could a developer learn from this?", merges those concepts into a persistent knowledge graph stored as graph.json, and regenerates a self-contained interactive HTML graph you can open any time. New nodes are flagged as 🌱 new topics learned. The result is a browsable map of everything you've picked up while coding with AI, without slowing down your session.

How the Pipeline Works

Every agent's hook payload is normalized into a single CodeEvent object, then passed through a harness-blind pipeline: insights → knowledge graph → HTML → per-session recap. Key modules include:

• adapters.py — translates each agent's hook format into a CodeEvent
• insights.py — calls an LLM CLI (or the in-chat agent itself) to extract concepts
• graph.py — merges new concepts into the persistent knowledge graph
• viz.py — renders an offline, self-contained HTML visualization
• pending.py — buffers mid-session edits from tool-at-a-time agents

Analysis runs in a detached background process so your coding session never waits. Failures are logged and swallowed; they cannot interrupt your work. Turns with no substantive code make no LLM call.

Setup Path

Installation is a two-step process via pip:

pip install learnlance
learnlance setup

setup auto-detects which agents are present and writes their hooks for the current project. For chat-based agents (Copilot Chat in VS Code, Cursor, Kiro, Command Code, Antigravity, Gemini), the --in-chat flag lets the agent analyze its own work inside the chat — no separate CLI needed. Individual agents can also be configured with flags like --cursor, --codex, --copilot, or --git (a universal fallback via post-commit). The learnlance doctor command reports what's configured on disk versus what has actually fired.

Key Commands and Workflow

Once set up, the main interaction surface is the CLI:

• learnlance show — renders and opens the knowledge graph in the browser
• learnlance list -v — lists learned concepts with explanations
• learnlance stats — quick counts by category
• learnlance add "debouncing" — manually add a concept the agent missed, with optional --path or --force
• learnlance clear — remove one concept or wipe the entire graph
• learnlance config — adjust LLM backend, model alias, max topics per turn, background mode, or pause/resume tracking

Everything is stored under ~/.learnlance/. Each project keeps its own graph; graph.html is a multi-project dashboard. Per-session recaps are written to ~/.learnlance/insights/<session>.md.

No API Key Required

By default, Learnlance reuses an LLM CLI the user is already authenticated with — claude, gemini, copilot, cursor-agent, or ollama. The --in-chat mode goes further: the agent analyzes its own output inside the chat session, requiring no separate CLI installation at all. Custom LLM backends can be configured with learnlance config --llm-cmd.

Current Status

The repository was created in August 2026 and last updated in September 2026. It is actively seeking contributors across areas including new agent integrations, knowledge graph algorithms, concept extraction, graph visualization, CLI/UX, testing, and documentation. The project has 4 stars and 3 forks, with 19 open issues, indicating early-stage active development.