Show HN: CLI tool for detecting non-exact code duplication with embedding models

14 pointsposted an hour ago
by rkochanowski

4 Comments

murats

5 minutes ago

Nice idea. I can see this being useful before refactors, especially when the duplication is semantic rather than copy paste.

rkochanowski

an hour ago

I built Slopo to solve one specific problem: finding similar code that is hardest to detect by other tools, coding AI agents, and humans.

It finds similar-looking code with embeddings. This detects more than just copy-paste clones or even clones with minor changes. Similar code is often not a clone to refactor, and this is a trade-off. Initial results need to be verified, but coding agents can do this quickly. Example prompts are available on https://slopo.dev

Additionally, similar code distant in the codebase is ranked higher to focus on less obvious duplication.

The results differ a lot depending on the codebase. I noticed that sometimes most of the detected duplicates are false positives, but the remaining ones are strong candidates to refactor or even bugs. Sometimes it reveals much more real duplication.

realxrobau

42 minutes ago

If it did PHP I would love to run it over WordPress. What would it take to add that?

rkochanowski

17 minutes ago

PHP support can be easily added, I will release a new version soon.