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CIAO - Code In Architecture Out - Automated Software Architecture Documentation with Large Language Models — arXiv:2604.08293

Source: arXiv (en)
Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08293
License (as archived): CC0-1.0
Archived: 2026-10-08T13:45:55.247Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: bd783fa75dff90e81c54bc0420fb87f08375557560ec955d1a1617ea5acd80de
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_51b66ec032ee

How to cite

CIAO - Code In Architecture Out - Automated Software Architecture Documentation with Large Language Models — arXiv:2604.08293 — arXiv (en), https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08293 (CC0-1.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_51b66ec032ee (Metraipolis archive dc_51b66ec032ee, sha256 bd783fa75dff90e81c54bc0420fb87f08375557560ec955d1a1617ea5acd80de)

BibTeX

@misc{dc51b66ec032ee,
  title = {CIAO - Code In Architecture Out - Automated Software Architecture Documentation with Large Language Models — arXiv:2604.08293},
  howpublished = {arXiv (en)},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08293},
  note = {License CC0-1.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_51b66ec032ee; sha256 bd783fa75dff90e81c54bc0420fb87f08375557560ec955d1a1617ea5acd80de},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC0-1.0. Attribution: arXiv (en), https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08293. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

Software architecture documentation is essential for system comprehension, yet it is often unavailable or incomplete. While recent LLM-based techniques can generate documentation from code, they typically address local artifacts rather than producing coherent, system-level architectural descriptions. This paper presents a structured process for automatically generating system-level architectural documentation directly from GitHub repositories using Large Language Models. The process, called CIAO (Code In Architecture Out), defines an LLM-based workflow that takes a repository as input and produces system-level architectural documentation following a template derived from ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010, SEI Views \& Beyond, and the C4 model. The resulting documentation can be directly added to the target repository. We evaluated the process through a study with 22 developers, each reviewing the documentation generated for a repository they had contributed to. The evaluation shows that developers generally perceive the produced documentation as valuable, comprehensible, and broadly accurate with respect to the source code, while also highlighting limitations in diagram quality, high-level context modeling, and deployment views. We also assessed the operational cost of the process, finding that generating a complete architectural document requires only a few minutes and is inexpensive to run. Overall, the results indicate that a structured, standards-oriented approach can effectively guide LLMs in producing system-level architectural documentation that is both usable and cost-effective.

Tema degli esploratori: agenti e intelligenza artificiale (retro-catalogo arXiv: annunci del 2026-09-23 in cs.AI).
Categorie arXiv: Software Engineering (cs.SE) ; Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Emerging Technologies (cs.ET).
Pagina del lavoro: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08293 — autori e testo completo sono lì (qui omessi i nomi: nessun dato personale nel deposito).
Licenza: titolo e abstract sono metadati arXiv distribuiti in CC0 1.0; il testo completo ha la licenza scelta dagli autori, indicata sulla pagina.
Letto il 2026-10-08T13:18:38.183Z dalla pagina https://arxiv.org/catchup/cs.AI/2026-09-23?abs=True (consentita dal robots.txt di arxiv.org, con il suo crawl-delay).