Article illustration 1

In an era of opaque hexadecimal hashes and UUIDs, developers often sacrifice human comprehension for technical necessity. Enter Codenames—a featherweight TypeScript library that bridges this gap by converting numbers into memorable identifiers like london, paris, or berlin. Designed for scenarios where human readability trumps cryptographic collision resistance, it offers an elegant solution to a surprisingly pervasive pain point.

Why Human-Readable Identifiers Matter

Consider the chaos of managing preview environments: 

import codename from "codenames/cities-20";
const previewUrl = `https://${codename(1234)}.example.com`; //→ https://london.example.com

Instead of wrestling with preview-env-pr-1234.k8s-cluster-7a, teams get consistent, memorable URLs. PR #1234 always maps to london.example.com without database overhead. The same principle applies to Docker containers (app-tokyo), session IDs (vienna-support), or feature flags—transforming technical artifacts into intuitive communication tools.

Engineering Elegance Under the Hood

Codenames packs impressive technical specs into a sub-3KB core:

  • Deterministic Outputs: Same input → same codename, always
  • Blazing Speed: 50,000+ generations/second
  • Zero Dependencies: No supply-chain risk
  • Universal Runtime: Works in Node.js, Deno, browsers, and edge environments
  • Theme Variety: 10+ curated lists (cities, animals, colors) in sizes from 10 to 100 words

Custom lists unlock niche use cases:

import { codename } from "codenames/core";
codename(42, ["phoenix", "raptor", "voyager"]); //→ "raptor"

The CLI: Developer Experience Amplified

Terminal workflows integrate seamlessly:

npx codenames 5678 --theme animals-20 #→ "dog"
echo "https://$(codenames $PR_NUMBER).preview.example.com"

This isn’t just about convenience—it’s about reducing cognitive load. When debugging, recalling "the berlin deployment" proves faster than parsing alphanumeric soup.

When to Use (and When Not To)

Codenames excels in:
- Preview environment URLs
- Ephemeral resource naming (Docker, VMs)
- User-friendly session/error IDs
- Predictable test data generation

But it’s deliberately not a cryptographic hash. With word lists as small as 10 entries, collisions are manageable but expected—perfect for low-stakes readability, unsuitable for security.

The Bigger Picture: Readability as Priority

In a world drowning in machine-generated noise, Codenames makes a compelling case for humane tooling. By prioritizing developer experience with MIT-licensed simplicity, it demonstrates how micro-libraries can solve macro-problems—one memorable name at a time.

Source: Codenames GitHub Repository