Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Go 1.25+
• Git (for change frequency analysis)
• An OpenRouter API key (for LLM blast radius analysis)

Install

go install github.com/zanetworker/highstakes/cmd/heatmap@latest

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/zanetworker/highstakes
cd highstakes
go install ./cmd/heatmap

Set Up

Export your OpenRouter API key:

export OPENROUTER_API_KEY="sk-or-..."

Add it to your shell profile (~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc) to persist across sessions.

First Analysis

cd /path/to/your/repo
highstakes init
highstakes analyze

highstakes init creates a .heatmap/ directory with a config.yaml file. highstakes analyze scans the repo, sends source files to the LLM for blast radius assessment, and writes results to .heatmap/heatmap.json.

On a 300-file repo this takes about 1-2 minutes and costs roughly $0.15 with the default model (DeepSeek V4 Flash).

View Results

Three ways to see the heatmap:

# Interactive HTML dashboard (opens browser)
highstakes dashboard

# Terminal TUI
heatmap

# CLI queries
highstakes list --tier high
highstakes get src/auth/oidc.rs
highstakes report

What to Do With the Results

HIGH/CRITICAL files: These need careful human review on every PR that touches them. Set up branch protection or CI gates (see CI Integration).

MEDIUM files: Worth a human glance. One reviewer is sufficient.

LOW files: Safe for AI-assisted review or auto-merge. Don’t spend senior engineer time here.

Next Steps

• Configuration to tune tier thresholds and exclude directories
• CI Integration to gate PRs automatically
• CLI Reference for all commands and flags