Internal Working of Dodo

Overview

Dodo is an AI-powered CI/CD automation tool that intelligently parses a project’s configuration files, detects tools for various development workflows (linting, testing, building, deploying), and generates optimized GitHub Actions workflows. It caches detected configurations for fast lookups and ensures that changes in project dependencies are seamlessly integrated into CI/CD pipelines.

Project Parsing

  1. Full Project Scan:

    • Uses Magika (by Google) to identify and classify files.
    • Uses local or cloud to determine whether a file is a configuration or an "interest" file (i.e., relevant to linting, testing, building, or deployment).

  2. Parsing Configuration Files:

    • Once files of interest are identified, Dodo parses the file and use AI to extract relevant tool configurations.
    • Extracts tool names, versions, dependencies, and settings from files like:
      • pyproject.toml, setup.py, requirements.txt (Python)
      • Cargo.toml (Rust)
      • package.json (Node.js)
      • Makefile, CMakeLists.txt (C/C++)
      • clippy.toml, .prettierrc, .eslint.json (Linters and formatters)

  3. Generating dodo.toml:

    • AI processes the extracted data and generates a structured dodo.toml with:
      • Detected tools and their versions
      • CI/CD configurations for linting, testing, building, and deployment
      • Additional settings for caching, notifications, hooks, and security checks

2. Dependency Updates & CI/CD Syncing

Dependency Management

  • Many users rely on Dependabot or manual updates to bump dependency versions.
  • Once new versions are pulled locally, running dodo update will:
    • Use the cached file locations to rapidly find relevant config files.
    • Parse them for updated versions and reflect the changes in dodo.toml.
    • Update the corresponding dodo.lock file.

CI/CD Workflow Synchronization

  • dodo update or dodo upgrade also ensures:
    • Only new/modified files are re-parsed, optimizing execution speed.
    • If a new configuration file is detected (e.g., clippy.toml added), it gets automatically included in dodo.toml.

3. Adding External Integrations

Dodo allows users to integrate external CI/CD tools using:

dodo add <external-ci>
  • This fetches workflow templates from raphus.io (Dodo’s template registry) and adds them to .github/workflows/*.yml.
  • Example integrations:
    • Security Scans: Trivy, Snyk, CodeQL
    • Dependency Updaters: Dependabot, Renovate
    • Pre-commit Hooks: Black, Prettier, pre-commit
  • dodo add ensures these integrations persist even when running dodo clean.

4. Building & Regenerating CI/CD Workflows

Fetching & Adapting CI/CD Templates

  • When running dodo build, Dodo:
    • Fetches base workflow templates from raphus.io.
    • Uses AI to adapt them according to project structure.
    • Generates .github/workflows/ci.yml.

Updating vs. Upgrading

  • dodo update: Updates dependency versions in dodo.toml.
  • dodo upgrade: Updates dependency versions in dodo.toml and dodo.lock both.

5. Cleaning CI/CD Configuration

Implicit Cleanup

dodo clean
  • Removes all tools (testing, linting, building, deploying) from CI/CD if their config files are not present in the project.
  • Does not remove external integrations (e.g., Dependabot, pre-commit, security scans).

Explicit Tool Removal

dodo clean <tool>
  • Removes specific tools from CI/CD even if their config files still exist.
  • Example: 
    dodo clean ruff
    • Removes Ruff from CI/CD but keeps Flake8 if both are present.

Final Thoughts

Dodo is designed to minimize manual CI/CD management by ensuring:

  • Automatic detection of project tools.
  • Smart dependency updates leveraging cached file locations.
  • Seamless workflow synchronization.
  • Fast and flexible cleanup operations.

By integrating AI-powered parsing with a robust caching mechanism, Dodo ensures blazing-fast execution while maintaining an up-to-date and optimized CI/CD pipeline. 🚀