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Desktop GUI

The methodatlas-gui module is a professional Swing desktop application for interactive analysis and tag review. It targets security engineers and auditors who need to examine, override, and apply AI-suggested @Tag annotations without using the command line.

Overview

MethodAtlas GUI — tag editor panel showing AI-suggested security/crypto chips, green check-marks for already-reviewed methods, and the orange warning triangle for the currently selected method

The window is divided into three areas:

  • Left — results tree, grouping discovered methods by class with colour-coded status icons
  • Top-right — syntax-highlighted source editor (RSyntaxTextArea) with line numbers and code folding
  • Bottom-right — tag editor with the current method's existing tags, AI-suggested tag chips, a custom override field, and staging buttons

Results tree icons

Icon Colour Meaning
⚠ Orange AI suggests tags not yet present in source — needs review
✓ Green Source tags satisfy the AI suggestion — nothing to do
– Blue AI classified this method as not security-relevant
○ Grey No AI data yet
✎ Orange Changes staged but not yet written to disk

Tag editor buttons

Three buttons appear in the bottom-right of the tag editor panel. Understanding the difference between them is important:

Button What it does
Stage Selection Stages exactly the tags that are currently toggled on in the AI chip row, plus any text entered in the custom override field. Use this when you want to cherry-pick from the AI suggestions or add your own tags.
Accept All AI Tags Stages every tag the AI suggested for this method, regardless of which chips are toggled. Use this for a one-click accept when you agree with the full AI recommendation.
Unstage Discards any staged (pending) changes for the current method without touching the source file.

Nothing is written to disk until Save All Changes

Both staging buttons only mark the method as pending — no file I/O happens. The toolbar Save All Changes button batches all staged patches per file into a single write, which prevents line-number drift when multiple methods in the same class are modified.

Staged workflow

  1. Run analysis (▶ Run Analysis) — the tree populates incrementally; the first method needing review is auto-selected when AI finishes.
  2. For each ⚠ method: review the AI chip suggestions, toggle individual chips on/off, optionally add custom tags, then click Stage Selection or Accept All AI Tags.
  3. The method icon changes to ✎ and the tag row in the tree shows the pending tags.
  4. When all desired methods are staged, press Save All Changes in the toolbar. All staged methods are patched in one pass per file and the editor reloads with the updated content.

Audit trail

Every Save All Changes writes two artefacts into .methodatlas/ inside the scanned directory:

  • methodatlas-YYYYMMDD-HHmmss.csv — immutable timestamped record of every patched method: AI suggestion, user decision, drift category. Compatible with the CLI DeltaReport schema.
  • overrides.yaml — cumulative ClassificationOverride YAML; pass it to a future CLI run via --override .methodatlas/overrides.yaml to reproduce the same decisions without re-invoking the AI.

The note field in each YAML entry carries "Reviewed <ISO-8601> by <operator>" when an operator name is configured in Settings → Audit.

Settings

Open ⚙ Settings to configure:

  • AI Profiles — named provider configurations; switch the active profile from the toolbar combo box without opening Settings
  • Discovery Plugins — enable or disable individual language plugins per scan
  • Audit — operator name written into audit records
  • Appearance — theme (IntelliJ Light / Flat Dark / Flat Light / Darcula); takes effect on next launch

Build and run

The GUI is bundled into the root distribution together with the CLI — there is a single lib/ directory shared by both entry points, and the ANTLR grammar-compiler JARs are stripped from lib/ just as they are for the CLI.

# Build the combined CLI + GUI distribution
./gradlew installDist          # install to build/install/methodatlas/

# Or build the zip archive
./gradlew distZip              # produces build/distributions/methodatlas-<version>.zip

# Run the GUI start script (Unix)
build/install/methodatlas/bin/methodatlas-gui

# Run the GUI start script (Windows)
build\install\methodatlas\bin\methodatlas-gui.bat

# Run directly from Gradle during development
./gradlew :methodatlas-gui:run

Settings are persisted to %APPDATA%\MethodAtlasGUI\settings.json on Windows and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/methodatlas-gui/settings.json (or ~/.methodatlas-gui/settings.json) on Linux and macOS.