Athena: Building a Local-First AI Change Intelligence & Release Engine

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle Submission 💸

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle

Athena is an open-source, local-first Git & AST change-intelligence engine and Model Context Protocol (MCP) server built for the Hacktoberfest 2026 — Side Hustle Challenge. 🛡️

Every developer and engineering team faces the same dread on release day:

I built Athena to turn raw Git history and multi-language syntax trees into structured, mathematically verified change intelligence—without ever sending your code to closed third-party cloud APIs.

🔍 AST-Level Breaking Change Detection: Parses Python and TypeScript syntax trees across Git commit ranges to pinpoint removed exports, altered parameter lists (positional, keyword, and defaults), and modified return types.

💥 Caller Blast Radius Mapping: Automatically traverses your repository to find every internal file, caller function, and imported symbol affected by a modified signature.

📚 Documentation Drift Detection: Cross-references modified code symbols against Markdown guides and docstrings to catch stale documentation before shipping.

📝 Evidence-Grounded Release Notes: Generates categorized changelogs where every bullet point is linked directly to exact commit hashes and file diffs.

🔌 Universal Model Context Protocol (MCP): Plugs natively into Claude Desktop, Cursor, Zed, or any AI coding assistant via standard JSON-RPC 2.0 stdio tools.

🔒 Offline-First & Privacy-Focused: Runs completely on your local machine using Ollama and open-weight models like qwen2.5-coder:7b. Your proprietary codebase never leaves your computer.

Athena is built for engineering teams, freelancers, and companies building in regulated environments:

The Side Hustle Model: An open-core CLI and MCP server for solo developers, paired with an automated GitHub Action bot ($19/month solo / $79/month team) that audits every Pull Request and posts blast-radius warnings directly in PR reviews.

Athena can inspect any local Git repository (pass. for your current directory, or a path to a project). You can also run python examples/create_demo_repo.py to generate an instant sandbox repo with sample commits, breaking changes, and documentation drift.

python -m athena breaking-changes. --base v1.0.0 --target v2.0.0 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Found 1 breaking change requiring human review: [CRITICAL] calculate_metrics (function) Location: src/core/calculator.py:42 Change: Non-optional parameter 'weights' was added to public function Evidence: commit 4a8b21c: "feat: add weights support to metrics calculation" Suggested SemVer Bump: MAJOR Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 2. Assessing Caller Blast Radius python -m athena analyze. --base v1.0.0 --target HEAD Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Analysis Summary: • Commits analyzed: 12 commits between v1.0.0 and HEAD • Files modified: 8 (Python: 5, TypeScript: 2, Markdown: 1) • AST Symbol changes: 3 modified signatures, 1 deprecated export • Downstream callers affected: 4 internal callers identified Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 3. Generating Evidence-Verified Release Notes python -m athena release-notes. --base v1.0.0 --target v2.0.0 --version "v2.0.0" Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode # Release Notes — v2.0.0 ## ⚠️ Potential Breaking Changes - `calculate_metrics`: Parameter `weights` added without a default value in `src/core/calculator.py` ( [ `4a8b21c` ]( commit:4a8b21c ) ) ## 🚀 What's Changed - Added async worker queue execution engine in `src/engine/worker.py` ( [ `7d9e10f` ]( commit:7d9e10f ) ) - Refactored export interfaces in TypeScript client ( [ `b12c40e` ]( commit:b12c40e ) ) ## 📚 Documentation Drift - `docs/api_guide.md` references the old 2-argument signature for `calculate_metrics` Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 4.

Interactive AI Editor Integration (MCP Server) Add Athena to your claude_desktop_config.json or Cursor settings:

{ "mcpServers": { "athena": { "command": "python", "args": [ "-m", "athena", "mcp" ] } } } Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Now your AI editor can directly query Athena for verified blast radiuses and breaking-change assessments before suggesting code edits!

The entire engine is open-source under the MIT license:

Local-First, Evidence-Backed Git & AST Release-Readiness and Change-Intelligence MCP Server