FeatX: Editing Software by Editing Features for Repository-Level Code Evolution
Xutian Li, Yifeng Zhu, Xianlin Zhao, Yanzhen Zou, Lu Zhang, Bing Xie
Published · ASE 2026, Tool and Dataset Track
FeatX addresses the need to manually manage context and locate feature implementations in code-centric workflows. It uses an explicit feature hierarchy and feature–code mappings to drive repository-level code editing.
- Combines JavaParser-based static analysis with LLM-guided exploratory retrieval to assemble cross-file context.
- Locates target code from semantic feature changes, plans modification dependencies and execution order, and produces reviewable code diffs.
- Across 38 real feature-change commits, achieved 0.385 function-level change-localization F1, a 42.6% relative improvement over the strongest baseline.
- In a 10-participant user study, reduced average NASA-TLX workload scores by 41% compared with ChatGPT-based conversation.
Publication: ASE 2026, Tool and Dataset Track.
Paper: doi.org/10.1145/3832783.3834646.