FeatOutline: Feature-Oriented Repository Summarization for Enhanced Code Comprehension and Maintenance

FeatOutline addresses the challenge of organizing repository summaries by features while preserving fine-grained links to their implementations.

• Formalizes feature hierarchies and feature–code mappings, directly connecting features to implementing methods to support comprehension and localization.
• Evaluates traceability at both file and method levels, distinguishing file relevance from precise method localization.
• Across 32 tasks derived from real commits, achieved 57.4% method-level Link@3 F1, compared with 13.6% for the strongest baseline.

Publication: ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), published online on November 7, 2026.

Paper: doi.org/10.1145/3862475.