Comparison
CodeSee was acquired by GitKraken in 2023 and is no longer available as a standalone product. Compare what CodeSee offered to Glue's AI-powered codebase intelligence for product managers and engineering leaders.
CodeSee was acquired by GitKraken in 2023 and is no longer available as a standalone product. But if you were a CodeSee user - or if you're searching for what replaced it - this comparison explains what's changed and why Glue takes a different approach to the same fundamental problem: helping teams understand their codebases.
CodeSee positioned itself as a code visibility platform for development teams. The core pitch: developers spend 60% of their time reading and understanding code, so visibility tools should reduce that friction.
CodeSee offered codebase maps showing visual representations of how code connects across repos, service maps showing architecture diagrams with service dependencies, visual code reviews for understanding code impact before merging PRs, function-level visualization for seeing logic flow without reading line-by-line, interactive code tours for documenting systems with guided walkthroughs, and CodeSee AI for AI-generated summaries and insights.
The platform was built by developers, for developers. It addressed a real problem: codebases are hard to understand visually, and manually documenting them is tedious and always out of date.
CodeSee was acquired by GitKraken in 2023 because code visibility is table-stakes for modern development tools. Rather than stay independent, CodeSee integrated into GitKraken's broader DevEx platform. This made sense for GitKraken but meant CodeSee users lost the specialized product and got a feature within a larger tool.
The trade-off: CodeSee users gained access to GitKraken's ecosystem but lost the focused product that specifically solved the visibility problem.
While CodeSee focused on visualization for developers, Glue focuses on AI-powered understanding for product and engineering leaders. The target audience is different, which means the approach is different.
Glue's core capabilities include codebase Q&A in plain English where instead of browsing maps, you ask questions and Glue returns actual code references, call graphs, and implementation details. No need to learn the codebase visually - just ask.
Glue also provides competitive feature mapping, analyzing competitor products alongside your codebase to identify feature gaps. You see what you're missing - not just that code exists, but how your features stack up against competitors (scored 0-100%).
Product-focused insights help product managers understand what's possible with implementation specs that name specific files, dependencies, and architectural patterns. Research informs product decisions, not just code reviews.
Auto-generated living documentation is generated automatically from your code structure and kept current without manual updates. And simplified onboarding works with natural language - new engineers can ask questions and get answers immediately.
Is Glue just CodeSee with AI slapped on? No. CodeSee was built for developer productivity (understanding code during coding). Glue is built for product decision-making (understanding scope, gaps, and dependencies before coding). Different problem, different audience, different workflow.
Can I still use CodeSee? CodeSee is now part of GitKraken. You can use it as a feature within GitKraken's platform, but not as a standalone product. If you were a CodeSee-specific user, GitKraken's version might not meet your needs.
Does Glue have visual maps? Glue doesn't generate visual dependency maps. It uses AI analysis to answer questions. If visualization is critical for your team, you might pair Glue with a separate diagramming tool.
How does Glue compare to GitKraken + CodeSee together? GitKraken is a Git client and DevOps platform. CodeSee (within GitKraken) focuses on code review and PR visibility. Glue focuses on codebase intelligence for product decisions. They solve different problems and could be complementary rather than competitive.
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