Massive Parallel Prompting On File Systems

I've spent the last decade wrestling with a fundamental challenge in software development: how to evolve large codebases efficiently while maintaining their integrity. The breaking point came during a massive refactoring project at my previous company, where we needed to modernize a 500,000-line codebase. Our team spent months manually updating patterns, fixing inconsistencies, and trying to maintain coherence across the entire system.

That's when it hit me – we were thinking about code transformation all wrong. Instead of treating our codebase as a monolithic entity that needed sequential updates, what if we could parallelize the entire process? What if we could leverage LLMs to understand and transform code at scale, while maintaining the contextual awareness that makes human programmers so effective?

File Transformers was born from this realization. It's not just another code transformation tool – it's a standardized API that bridges the gap between LLMs and version control systems. The key insight was that by treating each file as a transformable unit while maintaining awareness of the broader codebase context, we could parallelize operations that previously required sequential processing.

The first time I saw File Transformers convert an entire TypeScript project into pseudocode in parallel, maintaining consistency across all files while respecting their interdependencies, I knew we were onto something significant. But what truly excited me wasn't just the speed – it was the possibility of creating self-iterating codebases that could evolve while staying true to their original purpose.

This tool is just the beginning. I envision a future where codebases can intelligently transform themselves based on high-level human guidance, where refactoring becomes a matter of intent rather than implementation, and where developers can focus on innovation rather than maintenance.

I'm sharing File Transformers with the open source community because I believe this approach to code transformation could fundamentally change how we think about software evolution. Whether you're managing a legacy codebase, implementing systematic changes across repositories, or experimenting with self-modifying systems, File Transformers provides the infrastructure to make it possible.

Join me in exploring this new frontier of software development. Try out the API, share your use cases, or contribute to the project. Together, we can build tools that make software development not just more efficient, but more imaginative.

— Jan Wilmake
Creator of File Transformers