🐉 Nessie Org — Open Source

Nessie Graph Explorer
Documentation

A modular, plugin-driven platform for loading, visualizing, and analyzing graphs. Connect any data source, apply filters, and render interactive graph visualizations — all extensible via a simple Python plugin API.

▶ Quick Start ◈ Architecture ⬡ Build a Plugin

What is Nessie?

Nessie Graph Explorer is a dark-theme developer tool for graph visualization and analysis. It is built around a plugin system — every piece of functionality (loading data, rendering the UI, filtering, visualizing) is provided by a plugin that registers handlers for named actions.

The platform is language-agnostic for plugins (Python entry points), web-based for UI, and ships with a Node.js CLI (nessie) for project management.

Key Concepts

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Plugin System

Every capability is a plugin. Plugins register handlers for named actions. No core changes needed to extend the platform.

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Action Bus

Plugins communicate through actions (load_graph, visualise_graph, filter_graph…). Any plugin can dispatch or handle any action.

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Workspaces

Multiple graphs can be open simultaneously in tabs. Each workspace has its own graph, filters, console messages, and search state.

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Context Protocol

Plugins interact with the platform via a Context interface — no direct imports. This makes plugins fully portable and testable.

CLI Tooling

The nessie npm CLI scaffolds projects, manages plugins, and starts servers — everything needed from the terminal.

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Web UI

The nessie-web plugin renders a complete browser interface: D3 force graph, tree view, filter panel, bird view minimap, console.

Ecosystem Overview

Repository	Type	Description
`nessie-api`	Core	Shared models: Graph, Node, Edge, Plugin, Action, FilterExpression
`nessie-platform`	Core	Plugin manager, workspace manager, context implementation
`@nessie-org/cli`	Tooling	npm CLI for project setup, plugin management, server start
`nessie-web`	Plugin	Web UI renderer — handles the `render` action, produces HTML
`flask-web-nessie`	Server	Flask HTTP server wrapping the platform
`django-web-nessie`	Server	Django HTTP server wrapping the platform
`nessie-graph-manipulation-plugin`	Plugin	Handles `filter_graph` — attribute filters + full-text search
`nessie-relationaldb-datasource-plugin`	Plugin	SQLite → Graph datasource plugin
`nessie-npm-dependencies-plugin`	Plugin	npm registry crawler datasource plugin
`nessie-python-datasource-plugin`	Plugin	Python AST → Graph datasource plugin
`nessie-simple-visualizer-plugin`	Plugin	Simple circle-based SVG graph visualizer
`neisse-graph-visualiser-block`	Plugin	Block/card-style SVG graph visualizer showing all attributes
`nessie-cli` (plugin)	Plugin	Console CLI interpreter using textX grammar