django-orm-lens

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Django ORM Lens

The schema intelligence layer for Django.

Your entire model graph — live in your editor sidebar, gating your CI, and answering your AI agent over MCP. All from static parsing: no database, no runserver, no working venv.

Replaces: graph_models + django-schema-graph + hand-drawn ER diagrams + grep archaeology.

Featured in Django News #347 · PyCoder's Weekly #746

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⚡ 10 seconds to first insight

uvx django-orm-lens scan      # or: pipx run django-orm-lens scan

Cold clone, broken venv, no settings module — you still get every app, model, field, and relation of the project in your terminal.

Then pick your surface — three distributions, one parser core:

You are	Install	You get
Editor user — VS Code / Cursor / Windsurf / VSCodium	code --install-extension frowningdev.django-orm-lens	Field autocomplete in .filter(), sidebar tree, live ER diagram, hover cards, 17 QuickFix rules
Terminal / CI user	pip install django-orm-lens	17 subcommands, SARIF + PR annotations, pre-commit hooks, a GitHub Action
AI-agent user — Cursor / Claude Code / Aider / Zed / Continue	pip install "django-orm-lens[mcp]"	13 read-only MCP tools answering schema questions from ground truth

MCP setup is one JSON block — see Integrations. Point DJANGO_ORM_LENS_ROOT at your Django project's absolute path.

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🆓 Paid-tier capabilities, free and MIT

Schema review is a paid category nearly everywhere. A bot that reviews every pull request, analysis that follows a queryset past the function it was built in, a check that catches schema drift, index advice grounded in real table statistics — those normally sit behind a per-seat or per-database subscription.

All of it is here, MIT-licensed, with no tier gate, no seat count, no account, and no telemetry:

Capability usually sold as a paid tier	Here
PR review bot for schema changes — posts once, then updates in place	blast-radius + the Action
Analysis that follows a queryset across functions	nplusone
Schema drift detection	drift
Index proposals from observed QuerySet usage	suggest-indexes
Migration risk weighed against real table sizes	blast-radius --stats
Blast radius of a destructive migration	blast-radius
Cross-layer impact of removing a field	impact

There is no Pro tier, and none is planned. If the tool saves you an afternoon, a star is the entire ask.

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📊 Traction

If the tool saves you a grep next time you touch a strange Django project — a star helps others find it.

📈 Star growth

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⚡ Install

VS Code / Cursor / Windsurf (VS Code Marketplace):

code --install-extension frowningdev.django-orm-lens

VSCodium / code-server / Gitpod / any OSS Code fork (Open VSX):

codium --install-extension frowningdev.django-orm-lens

Or search Django ORM Lens in the Extensions view — same publisher frowningdev on both registries.

Terminal & AI coding agents:

pip install django-orm-lens              # CLI only
pip install "django-orm-lens[mcp]"       # + MCP server for AI agents

Requires Python 3.9+. Zero runtime dependencies for the CLI.

Docker (v0.6+):

docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/workspace" ghcr.io/frowningdev/django-orm-lens scan --path .

Multi-arch (amd64 + arm64). No Python required on the host. Good for CI and one-off audits.

🎯 The problem

Works offline. Works on a broken venv. Works on someone else's laptop. Works in CI.

You open a Django project. It has 20 apps. You need to answer a simple question:

"Which app owns the Order model, and how is it connected to User?"

Today, that means: Ctrl+P, "models", scroll through 30 hits, open five files, Ctrl+F for class Order, read through 400 lines of ForeignKey('otherapp.Something') strings, try to remember what you learned two files ago.

Half a day gone. Every time. On every project.

✨ With Django ORM Lens

📚 A tree of everything

Every app → every model → every field → every Meta option. Grouped by application, sorted alphabetically, expandable.

Icons distinguish CharField from ForeignKey from ManyToManyField at a glance.

🕸️ A live ER diagram

One command opens a Mermaid entity-relationship diagram of your entire schema. Watch it redraw as you edit. Export to SVG.

ForeignKey, OneToOneField, and ManyToManyField become proper cardinality arrows.

🔎 Hover for relations

Hover over ForeignKey('app.Model') in any Python file → a card pops up with the target model's fields, relations, and a "Jump to" link. No Ctrl+F, no file dialog.

🧭 Jump-to-definition

Click any field in the tree → cursor lands on the exact line. Filter the tree by app or model name. Split models/ packages are fully supported.

⚡ Zero configuration

No DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE. No runserver. Parses models.py statically. Works with a broken venv, a missing dependency, or on someone else's laptop.

🎨 Native VS Code UI

Dark theme. Light theme. Your theme. Follows your icon theme, your font, your key bindings. Nothing garish, nothing branded.

🚀 Power features

💥 Blast radius

The review-time question a schema change actually raises: what does this hit? Every destructive migration operation becomes a target carrying its risks, every place in the codebase that still reads it, and — for whole-model operations — the cascade fallout.

migration-risk, impact and cascade each answer a third of that; nobody joins them by hand, so the tool does. --format markdown is a postable PR comment; --stats turns "probably populated" into ~41 000 000 rows, 12.0 GB from a read-only query you run yourself, with no database credential anywhere near CI.

🧭 Schema drift

makemigrations --check without booting Django. Each app's migrations are replayed in order into the field set they imply, then compared against what models.py declares.

Django's own check needs a working settings module, an importable app registry and every dependency installed — unavailable on a cold clone or a broken venv, which is exactly when the answer is cheapest to act on. Only the dangerous direction fails the build: a field declared but never migrated means the column will not exist, and the first query touching it errors.

🎯 Inline QuickFixes (17 rules)

Static analysis over .py files with Ruff-style codes (DOL001..DOL032), Clippy-style Applicability, and per-rule severity overrides. .count() > 0 → .exists(), null=True on CharField, missing on_delete, datetime.now() → timezone.now() and a dozen more.

Suppress inline with # django-orm-lens-disable-next-line DOL007.

🧪 Factory generator

Right-click any model → factory_boy DjangoModelFactory scaffold with Faker providers keyed by field type. CharField(max_length) scales word-count buckets, DecimalField(N,D) computes left_digits=N-D, choices= maps to Iterator, M2M gets @post_generation. FK chains pull related factories transitively.

Also available as CodeLens above each model class.

🕰 Time-Travel Schema Diff

Pick a models.py, pick two commits, get a typed diff as PR-ready markdown. AddModel / DropModel / RenameModel / ModifyModel events with confidence-scored rename detection (Levenshtein + field-shape Jaccard).

Renames are first-class events, never Add + Drop. Blob-SHA LRU cache — commits that don't touch models.py share their parsed snapshot.

🔎 Impact analysis

"What breaks if I remove this field?" — right-click a field or model → workspace-wide scan grouped by Django layer (models, serializers, forms, admin, views, urls, templates, tests, migrations).

Findings carry a Certain / Likely / Possibly confidence tag. Handles ORM string refs (order_by("-author")), kwarg lookups (filter(author__id=1)), Meta.fields tuples, and template variables.

⚡ Interactive query builder

Right-click a field or model → pick a template → snippet inserted at cursor (with tab-stops) or in a fresh untitled buffer.

.filter(field=?) on an FK auto-appends .select_related(...), .annotate(post_count=Count('post_set')) honours related_name, .prefetch_related for M2M, .values('field').distinct(), .only('field').

🎨 Sidebar UX overhaul

Stable TreeItem.id — refresh no longer collapses the tree. Rich MarkdownString tooltips with command: deep-links. Activity-bar badge counts DOL### issues.

FileDecorationProvider badges: red ! on FK-without-on_delete, yellow ~ on null=True string fields (bubbles up to the parent Model row, Git-style).

📸 What it looks like

Live sample — real django-orm-lens er output, rendered by GitHub right here:

erDiagram
  User {
    CharField display_name
  }
  Tag {
    CharField name
  }
  Post {
    CharField title
    DateTimeField created_at
  }
  Comment {
    TextField body
  }
  Post }o--|| User : "author [CASCADE, as posts]"
  Post }o--o{ Tag : "tags [as posts]"
  Comment }o--|| Post : "post [CASCADE, as comments]"
  Comment }o--|| User : "author [SET_NULL]"

Also included in the extension:

• 🕸️ Live ER diagram — Mermaid cardinality arrows, edge labels (CASCADE, through Model, as related_name), theme-aware, one-click SVG export
• 🔎 Hover cards — over any ForeignKey('app.Model') or ManyToManyField(...), with a one-click jump link
• 🧭 CodeLens — above every class Model line: field count, relation count, and an Open ER diagram action
• 🎨 Named themes — auto / default / dark / forest / neutral for the diagram webview

🤖 For terminals and AI coding agents

The same parser that powers the VS Code extension ships as a standalone Python package — with an optional MCP (Model Context Protocol) server so any MCP-compatible AI agent can navigate your Django schema without importing Django or booting your app.

CLI

django-orm-lens scan -f json                 # every app, every model, every field
django-orm-lens describe blog.Post           # one model in Markdown
django-orm-lens list | fzf                   # flat app.Model — pipes anywhere
django-orm-lens er > schema.mmd              # ER diagram — Mermaid (default)
django-orm-lens er -f dbml > schema.dbml     # …or DBML: paste into dbdiagram.io
django-orm-lens er -f d2 > schema.d2         # …or D2 / plantuml / dot
django-orm-lens diff before.json after.json  # what a PR changes structurally
django-orm-lens nplusone --format github     # N+1 findings as PR annotations
django-orm-lens migration-risk -f sarif      # SARIF for GitHub Code Scanning
django-orm-lens suggest-indexes blog.Post    # Meta.indexes proposals from usage
django-orm-lens signals                      # sender→signal→handler graph
django-orm-lens migration-deps blog -f mermaid   # per-app migration DAG
django-orm-lens cascade blog.Author          # what one delete() takes down
django-orm-lens impact author                # what still references a field
django-orm-lens blast-radius -f markdown     # risks + who still reads them
django-orm-lens drift                        # migrations vs models, no boot
django-orm-lens stats-sql                    # read-only SQL for --stats

impact, blast-radius, drift and stats-sql ship in py-1.7.0 and later.

Every command accepts --path <dir> and --exclude <glob>. nplusone / migration-risk / diff exit code 1 on findings — drop them into CI to block PRs on regressions.

MCP server

Register it once with your agent and it exposes thirteen read-only tools:

Tool	Purpose
list_apps	Every Django app in the workspace with model counts
list_models	Flat app.Model list, optional app filter
describe_model	Full field / relation / Meta detail for one model
find_relations	Inbound + outbound relations for one model
cascade_preview	Blast radius of one delete(), grouped by on_delete
er_diagram	ER diagram — mermaid / dbml / d2 / plantuml / dot
describe_migration_dependency	Per-app migration DAG: roots, leaves, cross-app deps
suggest_indexes	Meta.indexes proposals from observed QuerySet usage
signal_graph	Sender→signal→handler graph from @receiver decorators
blast_radius	What a destructive migration hits: its risks, the code still reading it, the cascade fallout
drift	makemigrations --check without booting Django — migrations diffed against models.py
impact	Every reference to a field or model name, grouped by Django layer
nplusone_scan	Static N+1 findings for the whole workspace

# Start it directly
django-orm-lens-mcp

# Or via the CLI subcommand
django-orm-lens mcp

Workspace resolution (py-1.3.0+). Every tool accepts an optional workspace_root argument on the call. Resolution priority: explicit arg → $DJANGO_ORM_LENS_ROOT → current working directory. Invalid or non-Django paths return a structured envelope ({"error": "WORKSPACE_NOT_DJANGO", "hint": "…"}) instead of empty results, so the agent can self-correct. Optional sandbox via DJANGO_ORM_LENS_ALLOWED_ROOTS (;-separated on Windows, : elsewhere).

🛡️ Gate your CI

Schema regressions are cheapest to catch the moment they enter a PR. Four zero-config ways to block them:

Blast-radius PR bot — the whole schema review as one comment, updated in place on every push instead of a new comment each time:

name: Schema review
on: pull_request

permissions:
  contents: read
  pull-requests: write        # only for `comment: true`

jobs:
  blast-radius:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: FROWNINGdev/django-orm-lens@action-v1
        with:
          command: blast-radius
          only-changed: true          # scope to migrations this PR touches
          comment: true               # post once, then update in place
          github-token: ${{ github.token }}

The comment goes up before the job fails, so a blocked PR still explains why. only-changed reads the PR's file list from the API rather than git diff, because actions/checkout defaults to fetch-depth: 1 and the base commit is not in the local history. On push events both flags skip with a notice instead of failing, so one workflow covers both triggers.

The Action installs from PyPI, so blast-radius and drift need py-1.7.0 or later — pin it with version: 1.7.0 if your workflow must not drift. To run an unreleased build instead, add install: false and install the source yourself; this repo's own workflow does exactly that, and is what verifies the Action on every PR.

pre-commit — two hooks, nothing to install locally:

# .pre-commit-config.yaml
repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/FROWNINGdev/django-orm-lens
    rev: py-v1.8.1
    hooks:
      - id: django-orm-lens-nplusone
      - id: django-orm-lens-migration-risk

GitHub Action — findings appear as PR annotations with zero extra permissions: