/rforge:impact - Change Impact Analysis

Analyze the ripple effects of changes across your R package ecosystem.

What It Does

Uses the rforge_impact MCP tool to:

• Identify affected packages
• Estimate cascade workload
• Find breaking changes
• Calculate update priority
• Provide mitigation strategies

Usage

# Impact of recent changes
/rforge:impact

# Impact of specific change
/rforge:impact "Rename extract_mediation to extract_med"

# Impact for function change
/rforge:impact --function extract_mediation

Output

Returns impact assessment with:

• Severity: LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH/CRITICAL
• Affected Packages: List with details
• Cascade Workload: Estimated time
• Breaking Changes: Functions/APIs affected
• Mitigation: Suggested strategies

Examples

Medium Impact

📊 IMPACT ANALYSIS

Severity: MEDIUM
Affected: 2 packages (probmed, medsim)

probmed:
  • 1 function call to update
  • Tests: 12 tests reference old API
  • Est. work: 2 hours

medsim:
  • 1 vignette example
  • Est. work: 1 hour

Total cascade: 3 hours
Recommended: Update & release in sequence

High Impact (Breaking Change)

⚠️ IMPACT ANALYSIS

Severity: HIGH (Breaking change)
Affected: 3 packages + indirect

Direct Impact:
  • probmed: 5 functions, 47 test cases
  • medsim: 2 examples, 1 vignette
  • sensitivity: 1 function call

Indirect Impact:
  • mediationverse: May need meta-update

Total cascade: 8-12 hours
Recommended: Deprecation path + major version bump

Use When

• Before making API changes
• Planning breaking changes
• Estimating release workload
• Coordinating ecosystem updates

Related Commands

• /rforge:deps - See dependency structure
• /rforge:cascade - Plan coordinated updates
• /rforge:doc-check - Check documentation impact