Documentation

Hyena is a Dart package and CLI for two related checks:

Dead code: resolve declarations and references, build a reachability graph, and report declarations that have no path from a root.
Complexity: parse functions, methods, constructors, and closures and calculate control-flow and size metrics.

It analyzes a Dart file or recursively scans a directory and can write console, JSON, Markdown, standalone HTML, or SARIF 2.1 output.

Choose a path

Goal	Start here
Run Hyena once	Getting started
Pick an installation model	Installation
Upgrade an existing v1.x project	Migrate to v2.0
Look up a command or flag	CLI reference
Exclude files or change thresholds	Configuration
Analyze a Dart workspace or monorepo	Workspaces and monorepos
Preserve framework or generated entry roots	Framework entry roots
Understand a finding	Dead-code analysis or complexity analysis
Consume or publish a report	Report formats
Use results in automation	CI and automation
Connect an AI client	Safe AI and MCP
Call the analyzers from Dart	Library API
Contribute to Hyena	Architecture and development

Defaults at a glance

hyena:
  exclude: []
  complexity:
    cyclomatic_threshold: 20
    max_nesting: 5
    max_parameters: 6
  dead_code:
    ignore_main: true
    ignore_exports: false
    ignore_private: false
    entry_points: []
    entry_point_annotations: []

Hyena also excludes *.g.dart, *.freezed.dart, *.mocks.dart, and any path containing a directory segment named generated, even when they are not listed in exclude.

Available in v2.0.0

Hyena Dart v2.0.0 moves to project-local installation and execution, reports unused public and private declarations by default, and makes console, JSON, Markdown, and HTML paths consistently relative to the package or workspace root.

Existing v1.x projects should read Migrating from v1.x to v2.0 before upgrading. Existing baseline fingerprints remain valid; SARIF, baseline, and MCP paths were already relative in v1.x.

Fixed in v1.2.1

Hyena Dart 1.2.1:

joins dead-code reachability across workspace package boundaries, preserving the exact resolved declaration while ignoring references that occur only inside unreachable callers; and
accepts native Windows separators in explicit and glob workspace entries.

Available in v1.2.0

Hyena Dart 1.2.0 adds:

CLI and MCP version output, with release checks that keep runtime output aligned with the package version;
package-scoped Dart workspace analysis with workspace-relative findings; and
configured declaration and annotation entry roots for framework- or generated-code reachability.