WSwslh·Feb 25, 2025Submission
Microsoft Application Inspector: source code characterization tool
1 points · Open discussionmicrosoft
ApplicationInspector
C#2020–2025
microsoft / ApplicationInspector
ApplicationInspector
A source code analyzer built for surfacing features of interest and other characteristics to answer the question 'What's in the code?' quickly using static analysis with a json based rules engine. Ideal for scanning components before use or detecting feature level changes.
9Distinct people
12Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
4.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A source code analyzer built for surfacing features of interest and other characteristics to answer the question 'What's in the code?' quickly using static analysis with a json based rules engine. Ideal for scanning components before use or detecting feature level changes.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year12 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-01-21 02:34:19 UTC to 2025-02-25 18:56:44 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 4 | 7 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
12 sources.xpis are just zip files.
You can literally just save them from addons.mozilla.org and look inside - it's js so it's not compiled, and obfuscated code is against Mozilla policy.
Automatic updates are optional too.
Microsoft Application Inspector might be handy for some superficial profiling - https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInspector
In Show HN: A Firefox extension to add latency to distracting webpagesAffects .Net Core 2.1, 3.0, 3.1 -not app specific but workaround exists as mentioned and is tracked here
https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInspector/issues/123
In Microsoft Application InspectorOver 93% of new software applications today use open source from public repositories of source code or other third party code and average over 100 components code that they didn't directly write. Often they have only a partial understanding of what is in them due to time constraints to release their products. That's a big attack surface and knowing what is in the code that developers choose to build their products with is becoming urgent. This tool scans code and reports the types of features found in it to help developers decide whether it does more than they expected from a features standpoint. See the project site and wiki for more https://github.com/Microsoft/ApplicationInspector
In Microsoft Application InspectorYes - its a typo. There is a pull request for it already.
https://github.com/Microsoft/ApplicationInspector/pulls
In Microsoft Application InspectorGood point. At a minimum it should clearly state that while the tool didn't "find" such a feature it should not be taken as a security reliable result. See https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInspector/wiki/6.-Un...
In Microsoft Application InspectorSee https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInspector/wiki/6.-Un... that answers questions on choice of icons and https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInspector/wiki/2.1-F... that talks about language support.
In Microsoft Application InspectorHeh, the icon is named "audible":
"displayName": "Dynamic command execution",
"detectedIcon": "fab fa-audible"
It's probably unintentionally used by an engineer unfamiliar with the product as audible is more common as a descriptive word than as a brand.
https://github.com/microsoft/ApplicationInspector/blob/08c91...
In Microsoft Application InspectorMicrosoft Application Inspector
419 points · Open discussionMicrosoft Application Inspector: code analyzer for surfacing characteristics
2 points · Open discussionMicrosoft Application Inspector
2 points · Open discussionApplicationInspector: A software characterization source code analyzer
2 points · Open discussion