Distilly vs Understand Anything
Which should you use? A side-by-side look at what each one does, who it suits, what it costs, how hard it is to set up, and where each falls short.
Open source · MIT
Turns a person's messages, docs, and interviews into a reusable profile that AI agents can load.
Open source · MIT
Turns a codebase, wiki, or docs into an explorable graph you can search and ask questions about.
The short answer
Choose Distilly if you need…
- Developers who want an agent to answer in the style of a specific colleague or mentor
- People building reusable Agent Skills for supported hosts like Claude Code or Codex
- Users who want a profile of a public figure or author built from public material
- Teams that want to preserve a departing colleague's working knowledge
Choose Understand Anything if you need…
- Developers joining a new team who need to learn an unfamiliar codebase
- People who want a visual map of how files and modules depend on each other
- Anyone who wants to check what their current changes might affect before committing
- Users of a Karpathy-pattern LLM wiki who want it shown as a linked graph
Side-by-side
| Distilly | Understand Anything | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Dev tool | Dev tool |
| Price | Free and open source | Free and open source |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 26.3k | 89.7k |
| Setup difficulty | Intermediate | Beginner |
| How you get it | Clone and build from source | See the README |
| Main language | Python | TypeScript |
| Last code update | 24 days ago | 11 days ago |
What each one is
Distilly
Distilly takes material you provide, such as messages, documents, interviews, or public sources, and builds a Person Profile describing a person's experience, decision patterns, expression, and ways of working. The profile is packaged as an Agent Skill that supported AI agent hosts can install and invoke. The README says it models observable patterns and does not claim to clone the person.
Understand Anything
Understand Anything is a plugin for AI coding assistants such as Claude Code. It scans a project with a multi-agent pipeline and builds a knowledge graph of its files, functions, classes, and dependencies, then provides an interactive dashboard to browse it. It is meant to help someone new to a codebase see how the pieces fit together without reading every file.
Best for
Distilly
- Developers who want an agent to answer in the style of a specific colleague or mentor
- People building reusable Agent Skills for supported hosts like Claude Code or Codex
- Users who want a profile of a public figure or author built from public material
- Teams that want to preserve a departing colleague's working knowledge
Understand Anything
- Developers joining a new team who need to learn an unfamiliar codebase
- People who want a visual map of how files and modules depend on each other
- Anyone who wants to check what their current changes might affect before committing
- Users of a Karpathy-pattern LLM wiki who want it shown as a linked graph
Strengths
Distilly
- Supports several agent hosts, including Claude Code, Codex, Hermes, and OpenClaw, per the README
- Output is packaged in the Agent Skill format, so it is portable across supported hosts
- MIT licensed with a large public community and a published technical report
Understand Anything
- Covers multiple AI coding platforms, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, and Gemini CLI
- Re-runs are incremental by default, re-analyzing only changed files
- Supports output in several languages via the --language option
Not ideal for
Distilly
- People who need a verified clone of a real person, since the README says it does not claim to clone anyone
- Users without source material, because output quality depends on the materials provided
- Anyone needing a one-click consumer app; the README describes a Skill-based workflow for agent hosts
Understand Anything
- Teams with strict token or cost budgets, since the initial run on a large project can use many tokens according to the README
- Projects needing a non-AI, fully deterministic analysis tool, because it relies on LLM agents for much of its work
- People not using one of the supported AI coding platforms, since it is built as an add-on for them
Trade-offs
Distilly
- The README states the profile reflects observable patterns, not the full person, so results can be incomplete or misleading
- Some hosts such as Grok Bot are only a preview and direct repo installation is not verified
- Quality depends heavily on the amount and quality of input material
Understand Anything
- The initial analysis of a large codebase can consume significant tokens
- Quality of summaries and relationships depends on the underlying LLM, which the README does not evaluate in detail
- The README is truncated, so full install steps for non-Claude platforms are not confirmed here
Getting started
Distilly
Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/titanwings/distillyUnderstand Anything
Add the plugin marketplace in Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add Egonex-AI/Understand-AnythingInstall the plugin
/plugin install understand-anythingFrequently asked questions
What is the difference between Distilly and Understand Anything?
Distilly: Turns a person's messages, docs, and interviews into a reusable profile that AI agents can load. Understand Anything: Turns a codebase, wiki, or docs into an explorable graph you can search and ask questions about. Distilly suits developers who want an agent to answer in the style of a specific colleague or mentor, while Understand Anything suits developers joining a new team who need to learn an unfamiliar codebase.
Are Distilly and Understand Anything free?
Distilly: Free and open source. Understand Anything: Free and open source.
Which is easier to set up, Distilly or Understand Anything?
Understand Anything is easier to get started with (rated beginner); Distilly is rated intermediate and usually needs more setup.
Is Distilly or Understand Anything more popular?
Understand Anything has more GitHub stars (89.7k) than Distilly (26.3k). Popularity isn't the same as fit — check which one matches your use case above.
What are other alternatives to Distilly and Understand Anything?
Other options people compare them with include wshobson/agents, planning-with-files, Ruflo, Agentic Awesome Skills, AutoHarness.
Keep comparing
Built from our catalogue entries for both products: open-source details come from each project's README (AI-assisted, refreshed weekly) and GitHub data; AI-tool details are editorial. Spotted something wrong? Let us know from either product's page.