AI CODE STITCHER

The automated, AST-aware bridge between Large Language Models and local codebases.

Why Use It • What's New in v3.38 • CLI Bridge • How It Works • Architecture • Keybindings • Changelog

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Watch a demo of AI CODESTITCHER in actual use using GODOT on YouTube

Why Use It

Using LLMs to write software usually comes with tedious busywork:

1. You prompt an LLM for changes and receive code wrapped in conversational pleasantries, markdown blocks, and truncated shortcuts (// ... rest of your code goes here ...).
2. You have to hunt down the matching file on disk, navigate to the correct scope, paste the snippet, fix indentations, balance brackets, and resolve broken imports manually.

AI Code Stitcher completely eliminates this friction.

Leave it running in the background. Hit copy on any LLM response, or pipe terminal output directly into the new stitch CLI. Stitcher analyzes the AST structure, matches your file’s indentation style, resolves fuzzy anchors, safely unrolls truncation, and commits changes cleanly to disk. Every write creates an automatic local rollback snapshot (Ctrl + Z), with visual side-by-side diff inspection always one keystroke away (F10).

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What's New in v3.38?

Universal Disarm & State Leak Prevention

• True F9 Panic Button: Pressing F9 while Armed (in either Normal or Tactical mode) now universally disarms the engine. Previously, pressing F9 while in Tactical mode would fail to disarm and instead silently convert the session to Normal mode, leaking override flags (like _force_full_file) and causing safety prompts to be dangerously bypassed.
• Safe Prompt Defaults: Full-file replacement confirmation prompts now safely default to [N] (No) to prevent accidental code overwrites from stray Enter key presses.
• Strict Flag Consumption: Tactical override flags are now aggressively consumed and wiped upon use, permanently preventing them from leaking into subsequent patch operations.

Continuous Syntax & Bracket Parsing

• Multi-line String Parity Fix: Completely rewrote the string masker inside the Universal Grammar Checker. It now uses a continuous character scanner instead of resetting line-by-line. This fixes spurious syntax errors where brackets ({}, [], ()) inside multi-line strings, JS/TS template literals (`), or line continuations (\) would falsely trigger and corrupt the bracket parity stack.

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Terminal Bridge (stitch CLI)

The CLI companion script (stitch_cli.py) communicates directly with the running Code Stitcher desktop runtime over non-blocking localhost IPC.

Usage:
  stitch [FILES/FOLDERS...]       Attach project files into the Compose Window (F7)
  <command> | stitch             Pipe patches, diffs, or LLM code directly to disk
  stitch --stream                Live-stream engine activity and AST diagnostics
  stitch --help, -h              Display the built-in guide

Common Workflows

1. Attach context files to your LLM Composer

Send files or folders straight from your terminal into the desktop prompt composer:

stitch src/player.gd src/combat/hitbox.gd

2. Pipe local LLM output directly to disk

Pipe raw streaming output from local models directly to your codebase:

ollama run codellama "Add input validation to update_user in user_service.py" | stitch

3. Pipe Git patches directly into the engine

Apply unstaged changes or branch diffs through Stitcher's fuzzy AST healing pipeline:

git diff main | stitch

4. Monitor live engine operations

Watch engine writes, AST sanity checks, and confidence ratings in real-time:

stitch --stream

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How It Works

  [ Chat LLM / CLI / Git ]
             │
      (Copy or Pipe)
             ▼
  ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │                   AI CODE STITCHER                     │
  │  • Strips conversational wrapper noise                 │
  │  • Identifies target file from memory index            │
  │  • Normalizes tabs, spaces, and CRLF parity            │
  │  • Accordion-stitches lazy truncations (...)           │
  │  • Runs pre-commit AST verification                    │
  └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
             │
    (Automatic Backup)
             ▼
  [ Disk Write & Local Snapshot (.bak) ]

1. Arm the Engine: Press F9 (or pipe via stitch).
2. Capture Any Output: Copy code from your browser/IDE, or pipe stdout directly from terminal utilities.
3. AST Detection & Placement: The engine scans code structure (Aider patch, unified diff, drop-in method, or headless snippet) to determine the exact file and line offset.
4. Auto-Clean & Apply: Placeholders are reconciled, indentation is adapted, and changes are safely written to disk with an automatic rollback snapshot.

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Architecture

The ecosystem consists of three unified components:

1. Code Stitcher (Engine Orchestrator)

Lightweight runtime managing memory monitoring, syntax trees, and file modifications.

• Clipboard & IPC Watcher: Real-time scanner monitoring memory and localhost sockets for incoming blocks.
• Indent Normalizer: Harmonizes indentation (e.g., converting 8-space LLM drift to clean 4-space targets).
• Accordion Stitcher: Automatically expands lazy ellipsis comments (// ... existing code ...) by anchoring against existing disk logic.
• AST Validator: Runs syntax checks prior to committing changes to protect projects from syntax errors.
• Snapshot Engine: Creates instant .bak snapshots in hidden .ep_backups/ directories.

2. Stitch Viewer (GUI Inspector)

Hardware-accelerated SDL2 diff interface providing visual reviews independent of Git.

• Side-by-Side Diff View: Real-time visual comparison between original snapshots and patched results.
• Granular Reverts: Visual controls to discard individual lines, blocks, or hunks.
• Integrated Inline Editor: Press Esc while viewing a file to adjust lines directly.
• Session Timeline: Complete visual history of all file modifications in your session.

3. Stitch CLI (stitch_cli.py)

Cross-platform command-line tool bridging local shell workflows, Git pipelines, and local AI runtimes directly into the Stitcher engine.

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Keybindings

Key	Action	Description
F9	Arm / Disarm	Toggle the background clipboard listener on or off.
Shift + F9	Tactical Arm	Intercept copied code and prompt for explicit destination confirmation.
F8	Filelock	Pin AST targeting strictly to a designated file.
F7	Compose	Open the prompt composer with automated context attachments.
F10	Launch Viewer	Open the hardware-accelerated visual diff viewer.
Ctrl + Z	Rollback	Instantly revert the most recent file injection using local snapshots.
Ctrl + Y	Redo	Re-apply a previously reverted file injection.

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Version History

Changelog (v3.17 – v3.38)

• v3.38:
  • Fixed Tactical Arm state leak where pressing F9 failed to disarm and instead leaked override flags into Normal mode.
  • Rewrote AST string/comment masker to use continuous character scanning, fixing false-positive bracket parity errors on multi-line strings and template literals.
  • Full-file replacement confirmation prompts now safely default to [N].
• v3.37:
  • Fixed Godot res:// and user:// URI prefixes polluting class extraction and producing spurious scope hints.
  • Added protocol stripping and expanded reserved keyword filters in comment and header scope analyzers.
  • Corrected indentation calculations in headless snippet alignment to prevent 12-space indent drift.
  • Restored full multi-candidate interactive review loop (#1, #2, #3) when snippet match confidence requires user confirmation.
• v3.36:
  • Added cross-platform stitch_cli.py companion tool with piping support (stdin), file attachments, and live UDP stream telemetry.
  • Enabled recursive folder monitoring across all directories for the free Personal Edition.
• v3.35:
  • Hardened non-interactive CLI safeguards against ambiguous prompt stalls.
• v3.34:
  • Game Engine syntax defenses (Godot @onready/@export multi-line parsing, Unreal UCLASS/UPROPERTY/UFUNCTION macros, Unity serialized attributes).
  • func signature protection against deep dedentation collapse.
• v3.33:
  • Reduced idle CPU load by yielding UI loops to OS threads.
  • Structural protection stepping over engine headers (class_name, extends, @tool, #pragma once).
• v3.30: Multi-directory monitoring for free tiers; tactical short-block accordion stitching.
• v3.28: Core migration to pygame-ce; rewritten headless snippet handling.
• v3.25: Snippet selection UI improvements and diff viewer performance tuning.
• v3.20: Added GDScript multi-file markdown replacements for small script files.
• v3.17: Triple-quote string tolerance updates and nested block parsing refinements.

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