Making Code Easier to Read

We believe understanding code should never hold you back from building great software. Whether you are a veteran developer exploring a new codebase or a student learning to code, ExplainThis helps you understand code faster and more deeply.

Our Story

ExplainThis started from a simple frustration: spending too many hours trying to read complex codebases. We saw that there were great tools to write, test, and deploy code. But there were few good tools to quickly understand it.

Our Technology

We use GPT-4, fine-tuned for code explanation. It reads code structure, patterns, and intent — not just function signatures.

Why We Built This

Every developer has faced the same moment: you open a file and have no idea what the author intended. Maybe it is legacy code with no comments. Maybe it is an open-source library you need to extend. Maybe you just inherited a project from someone who left the company. We built ExplainThis because we kept wishing for a tool that could give us a head start in those situations.

The alternatives are slow. You could step through the code line by line, search Stack Overflow, or ask a coworker who might be just as lost. We wanted something that works the way a patient, knowledgeable mentor would: you paste some code, and within seconds you get a clear explanation written for your skill level.

Our goal is not to replace understanding. It is to accelerate it. Once you grasp what a piece of code does, you can modify it, debug it, and build on it with confidence. That first moment of clarity is what ExplainThis delivers.

Our Values

• Accessibility: Making code understanding open to everyone
• Accuracy: Providing precise, reliable explanations
• Privacy: Keeping your code secure and confidential
• Innovation: Always improving our technology

Our Expertise

Our team combines three areas of expertise:

• AI and language understanding: We train models that read code the way a skilled developer would, picking up on context, intent, and common patterns.
• How programming languages work: Several engineers on the team have built compilers and code-analysis tools. That experience helps us produce explanations that are precise, not just plausible.
• Developer tooling: We have shipped editor extensions, CLI utilities, and CI integrations. We know what fits into a real workflow.

We test our models against real-world codebases in dozens of languages. This keeps our explanations up to date with current best practices and idiomatic patterns.

What Is ExplainThisCode?

ExplainThisCode.ai is an AI-powered code explanation tool. Developers paste a code snippet, upload a file, or connect a GitHub repository and receive a structured, plain-language explanation of what the code does, how it works, and why it was written that way.

Unlike general-purpose AI assistants like ChatGPT or AI code editors like GitHub Copilot and Cursor, ExplainThisCode focuses exclusively on helping developers understand existing code. Every feature — skill-level adaptation, complexity metrics, security analysis, line-by-line annotations — is designed for code comprehension.

ExplainThisCode integrates into developer workflows through three channels: a web app for quick explanations, a VS Code extension for in-editor analysis, and a REST API for programmatic access and CI/CD integration. It supports 20+ programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, C++, Go, Rust, Ruby, PHP, and more.