Service Dependency Mapper

Auto-discover and map service dependencies from code, configs, and runtime data. Generate dependency graphs, identify critical paths, find single points of f...

Map your service dependencies before an outage teaches you what they are. Auto-discover dependencies from code imports, config files, network traffic, and runtime traces — then generate dependency graphs, identify critical paths, and assess blast radius.

Use when: "map our services", "what depends on what", "service dependency graph", "blast radius analysis", "single point of failure", "what breaks if X goes down", "architecture visualization", or during incident planning.

Commands

1. discover — Auto-Detect Service Dependencies

Step 1: Static Analysis — Code and Config

# Find service URLs in code
rg "https?://[a-z][-a-z0-9]*(\.[a-z][-a-z0-9]*)*[:/]" \
  --type-not binary -g '!node_modules' -g '!vendor' -g '!*.test.*' 2>/dev/null | \
  grep -v "example\.com\|localhost\|127\.0\.\|schema\.org" | head -30

# Find service names in Docker Compose
rg "depends_on|links:|container_name:" docker-compose*.yml 2>/dev/null

# Find service references in Kubernetes
rg "serviceName:|host:|backend:" k8s/ manifests/ helm/ 2>/dev/null

# Find database/cache connections
rg "DATABASE_URL|REDIS_URL|MONGO_URI|POSTGRES_|MYSQL_|AMQP_URL|KAFKA_BROKER" \
  --type-not binary -g '!node_modules' -g '!vendor' 2>/dev/null

# Find message queue producers/consumers
rg "publish\(|subscribe\(|produce\(|consume\(|\.queue\(|channel\." \
  --type-not binary -g '!node_modules' -g '!vendor' 2>/dev/null | head -20

# Find gRPC/REST client instantiations
rg "GrpcClient|HttpClient|axios\.create|fetch\(.*service|\.NewClient" \
  --type-not binary -g '!node_modules' -g '!vendor' 2>/dev/null

Step 2: Runtime Analysis (if available)

# Kubernetes services
kubectl get services -A -o json | python3 -c "
import json, sys
svcs = json.load(sys.stdin)['items']
for svc in svcs:
    ns = svc['metadata']['namespace']
    name = svc['metadata']['name']
    stype = svc['spec']['type']
    ports = [str(p['port']) for p in svc['spec'].get('ports', [])]
    print(f'{ns}/{name} ({stype}) ports:{','.join(ports)}')
"

# Service mesh (Istio/Linkerd) — actual traffic dependencies
kubectl get destinationrules -A 2>/dev/null
istioctl proxy-config cluster <pod-name> 2>/dev/null | grep -v "BlackHole\|PassthroughCluster"

Step 3: Build Dependency Graph

dependencies = {
    'api-gateway': {
        'depends_on': ['auth-service', 'user-service', 'order-service'],
        'type': 'sync',  # sync HTTP calls
        'criticality': 'critical',
    },
    'order-service': {
        'depends_on': ['postgres', 'payment-service', 'kafka'],
        'type': 'mixed',
        'criticality': 'critical',
    },
    'notification-service': {
        'depends_on': ['kafka', 'smtp-relay', 'redis'],
        'type': 'async',
        'criticality': 'low',
    },
}

Step 4: Generate Dependency Map

# Service Dependency Map

## Graph (text representation)

[External Users] │ ▼ [api-gateway] ─sync──► [auth-service] ─sync──► [postgres-auth] │ │ │ ├─sync──► [user-service] ─sync──► [postgres-users] │ │ └─async─► [redis-cache] │ │ │ └─sync──► [order-service] ─sync──► [postgres-orders] │ │ └─sync──► [payment-service] ─► [Stripe API] │ │ │ └─async──► [kafka] │ │ │ ├──► [notification-service] ─► [SMTP] │ └──► [analytics-service] ─► [ClickHouse]

## Critical Path
api-gateway → order-service → postgres-orders
(Failure here = orders cannot be placed)

## Single Points of Failure
1. 🔴 **postgres-orders** — no replica, single instance
2. 🔴 **api-gateway** — single entry point, no fallback
3. 🟡 **kafka** — 3 brokers but no multi-AZ
4. 🟡 **Stripe API** — external dependency, no fallback payment provider

## Blast Radius Analysis
| If this fails... | These break... | Users affected |
|-------------------|---------------|----------------|
| postgres-orders | order-service, api-gateway (partial) | 100% orders |
| auth-service | All authenticated endpoints | 100% users |
| kafka | notifications, analytics | 0% (graceful degradation) |
| redis-cache | user-service (slow, not down) | 0% (cache miss only) |
| Stripe API | payment-service, orders | 100% new orders |

2. blast-radius — Analyze Impact of Service Failure

For a given service, trace all dependents (recursively):

• Direct dependents (call this service)
• Transitive dependents (depend on direct dependents)
• User-facing impact (which user flows break?)
• Graceful degradation (can dependents function without this service?)

3. visualize — Generate Diagram

Output dependency graph in:

• Mermaid (for GitHub/GitLab markdown)
• DOT (for Graphviz)
• PlantUML
• D2

4. health — Assess Architecture Health

Score the architecture based on:

• Depth of dependency chain (deep chains = fragile)
• Fan-out per service (wide fan-out = complex failure modes)
• Circular dependencies (exist? how many?)
• Single points of failure count
• Ratio of sync vs async dependencies
• External dependency count and fallback coverage