Cruderra

Cruderra is a tool that reads your code repositories and generates documentation and architecture diagrams automatically. The company says it does this in about a second, with no manual modelling, and keeps the docs in sync on every commit. It currently supports Java, Python and Go.

The problem it targets

The site describes documentation as a tax every team pays. Hand-written docs go out of date as soon as the next commit lands, so nobody trusts them and nobody updates them. New engineers take weeks to onboard because they must rebuild the system's design by reading code and asking colleagues. And no one sees the whole system, since services, databases and queues connect in ways a single diagram rarely shows.

How it works

First, you connect your repository and Cruderra reads the source directly. Second, it reconstructs the architecture: components, databases, queues and the links between them. Third, it produces always-current documentation, stored in Git as docs-as-code so it can be reviewed like any other change. An example on the site shows a generated markdown file for an orders service.

Getting started

Cruderra does not list public prices. You book a demo through the site.

Who it suits

Cruderra suits engineering teams with growing service-based systems, platform teams responsible for onboarding, and organisations where architecture knowledge sits with a few senior engineers. Teams preparing for audits or due diligence may also value up-to-date architecture diagrams.

Things to consider

Generated documentation describes what the code does, not why it was built that way. Keep a place for design decisions and context that only people can provide. Check how Cruderra accesses your repositories and where code is processed, since source code is sensitive. Test it on a representative repository, including any unusual frameworks or messaging patterns, to see how accurate the diagrams are. Language support is limited to Java, Python and Go, so mixed-language systems may only be partly covered. Reviewing generated docs in pull requests is a good habit to catch mistakes early.

For teams tired of stale wikis, a demo on one real service is a quick way to see whether automated docs could replace manual diagrams. Ask how it handles private repositories and monorepos.