ROS 2 Inspector maps entire workspaces before you run a single node

ROS 2 Inspector is a new open-source command-line tool designed to give developers a fast architectural overview of ROS 2 workspaces without launching anything. Created by aminebensaid66, it scans source code, launch files, and ROS interfaces to extract the structure of packages, nodes, topics, services, and actions. The `ros2inspector scan` command produces a compact package summary with health signals that highlight areas needing closer review, and results can be exported as tables, JSON, or YAML. For deeper exploration, `ros2inspector viz` generates a self-contained interactive HTML visualization of the system architecture, while companion commands can produce Mermaid communication graphs (`ros2inspector graph comms --format mermaid`), audit connectivity, and validate architecture against policy files. It currently handles Python, C++, ROS interfaces, and launch files.

The tool is intentionally static: it infers what architecture can be understood from source before runtime, leaving dynamic behavior like plugin loading, runtime remappings, and DDS network topology to runtime tools such as rqt_graph. The developer sees static and runtime analysis as complementary, and the project is still in early releases with room for broader pattern support. Community feedback in the forum thread was positive, with one maintainer pointing the author to the ROSGraph working group, which is exploring deterministic graph declaration and validation. For professionals entering large or poorly documented ROS 2 systems, ROS 2 Inspector promises to cut hours of manual grep-and-trace exploration down to a few automated commands.