Ariadne for VS Code

Chats are disposable, tasks are permanent.

Ariadne persists what actually matters about the work you're doing — goals, decisions, files touched, todos, errors, and commands — in a local SQLite database (.ariadne/state.db), independent of any single chat transcript or AI assistant. This extension is one of three interchangeable surfaces (alongside a CLI and an MCP server) built on the same shared @ariadne-dev/core library, so your task state is identical no matter which one you use.

What it does

• Adds an @ariadne chat participant to Copilot Chat, so you can recall or update the current task's state directly from the chat you're already using.
• Adds two commands to the Command Palette: Ariadne: New Task, Ariadne: Show Task Status, and Ariadne: Select Workspace Folder (for multi-root workspaces).
• Shows a status bar item (bottom-right) with the current task's title, or "no task" if none is set for the workspace — click it to jump to /status (or start a new task if there isn't one yet).
• Passively captures saved files, terminal commands, and git commits against the current task in the background (toggle via the ariadne.passiveCapture.enabled setting).
• Guards against silent misattribution: a one-time notice if you start working in a workspace with no current task (so passive capture doesn't silently drop everything), and a warning if the checked-out git branch no longer matches the branch the current task was last tracked on (in case you switched branches — or tasks — without telling Ariadne).

Chat commands

Type @ariadne in Copilot Chat, optionally followed by one of the slash commands below — or just describe what you want in plain language (e.g. "remind me to write the changelog", "decision: use SQLite for storage", "mark todo abc123 done"); Ariadne uses simple rule-based phrase matching (no LLM calls) to route common phrasings to the same handlers.

| Command | What it does | |---|---| | /status [id] [--budget <tokens>] (default) | Show a task's workspace root, tracked git branch, goal, latest checkpoint, open questions, unresolved errors, blocked todos, pending todos, recent files, recent commits, and recent commands. Defaults to the current task; an explicit id works even if it belongs to a different workspace. --budget trims the output to fit a token budget, like the CLI/MCP surfaces. | | /resume [id] [--budget <tokens>] | Alias of /status. | | /checkpoint <summary> | Record a checkpoint summary for the current task. | | /todo add <text> / /todo list / /todo done <id> / /todo reopen <id> / /todo block <id> / /todo edit <id> --text <t> / /todo delete <id> (all [--task <taskId>]) | Manage todos, including curation (edit/delete) and reopening/blocking. --task tells id-based subcommands which task/workspace the todo belongs to, if not the current one. | | /task new <title> / /task list [--all-workspaces] / /task use <id> | Create, list, or switch the current task. --all-workspaces lists tasks from every workspace Ariadne has ever seen (tagged with each task's workspace root). | | /task pause [id] / /task done [id] / /task archive [id] / /task reopen [id] / /task edit --title <t> --goal <g> | Change a task's lifecycle status, or edit its title/goal (curation). Defaults to the current task; an explicit id works even if it belongs to a different workspace. | | /decision <text> / /decision list / /decision edit <id> --text <t> --rationale <r> / /decision delete <id> (last two [--task <taskId>]) | Record, list, edit, or delete a decision. | | /error <message> / /error resolve <id> / /error reopen <id> / /error edit <id> --message <m> / /error delete <id> (all [--task <taskId>]) | Record, resolve, reopen, edit, or delete an error. --task tells id-based subcommands which task/workspace the error belongs to, if not the current one. | | /question add <text> / /question list / /question resolve <id> / /question reopen <id> / /question edit <id> --text <t> / /question delete <id> (id-based ones [--task <taskId>]) | Record, list, resolve, reopen, edit, or delete an open question blocking the task. --task works the same way. | | /search <query> [--all-workspaces] | Cross-entity search over task titles/goals, checkpoints, decisions, todos, errors, open questions, files, and commits. --all-workspaces searches every known workspace, tagging each result with its workspace root. | | /git-sync [id] | Sync the current git branch and any new commits (since the last sync) into a task. Defaults to the current task; an explicit id works even for a task in a different workspace (using that workspace's repo root). Same underlying logic as the CLI's git-sync and MCP's git_sync. | | /export [id] [--out <path>] | Render a task to Markdown, write it to .ariadne/export/<task-id>.md (or --out <path> for a custom location, relative to the workspace root unless absolute), and show it inline in the chat response. |

Any command above that resolves a task by id (not just the current task) — /status|/resume <id>, /task pause|done|archive|reopen <id> — transparently falls back to the global cross-workspace registry (~/.ariadne/registry.db) if the id isn't in the currently open workspace, and operates on whichever workspace actually owns it. Sub-entity ids (todos, errors, open questions, decisions) aren't indexed by the registry, so their id-based subcommands (done, reopen, block, edit, delete, resolve) need an explicit --task <taskId> hint to resolve across workspaces — without it they operate on the current workspace only, as before.

Requirements

• An open folder/workspace (Ariadne stores state at <workspace-root>/.ariadne/state.db, gitignored by default).

Known limitations (early/pre-release)

• Passive capture only ever appends to an explicitly started task (via /task new or "Ariadne: New Task") — it never creates or auto-switches tasks. Terminal command capture requires VS Code's shell integration API (stable since 1.93) and a shell that supports it.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm --filter @ariadne-dev/core build   # @ariadne-dev/core must be built first
pnpm --filter ariadne-vscode build  # bundles dist/extension.js via esbuild
pnpm --filter ariadne-vscode package  # produces a .vsix via vsce (current machine's platform only)

See esbuild.js for why better-sqlite3 is bundled the way it is (its native binding can't be inlined by esbuild).

Multi-platform packaging

better-sqlite3's native binding is platform/ABI-specific, so a single .vsix can only run on the platform it was built on. Real, per-platform .vsix files are produced without needing that OS, by downloading better-sqlite3's official prebuilt binaries (via prebuild-install, targeting VS Code's bundled Electron ABI — see VSCODE_ELECTRON_VERSION in esbuild.js) instead of relying on whatever's locally compiled:

pnpm --filter ariadne-vscode run package:linux-x64
pnpm --filter ariadne-vscode run package:linux-arm64
pnpm --filter ariadne-vscode run package:darwin-x64
pnpm --filter ariadne-vscode run package:darwin-arm64
pnpm --filter ariadne-vscode run package:win32-x64
pnpm --filter ariadne-vscode run package:all   # all five, into dist-vsix/

Each script fetches the correct native binary for that target before running vsce package --target <platform>-<arch>, so dist-vsix/ ends up with one correctly-targeted .vsix per platform, ready to publish with vsce publish --target <platform>-<arch> --packagePath dist-vsix/*.vsix (or upload individually via the Marketplace UI/vsce publish -i <file>).

If engines.vscode's floor is ever raised, bump VSCODE_ELECTRON_VERSION in esbuild.js to match the new floor's bundled Electron version (check electron in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob//package.json).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.