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Repowise for VS Code

The Repowise extension puts your repository's structure, history, and health inside the editor, and registers the Repowise MCP server with VS Code so the same index serves both you and your AI coding agent. It is a thin client over the local repowise CLI and server: everything is computed on your machine and nothing about your code leaves it through the extension.

Repowise for VS Code: the knowledge graph and health dashboard in an editor tab, gutter heat and a refactoring plan copied to your agent, and a change-risk read before you push, all from one local index

Install

  1. Install the CLI: pip install repowise (or uv tool install repowise).
  2. Install the extension from the Marketplace (search Repowise, publisher repowise-dev) or from Open VSX for VS Code forks.
  3. Open a repository and run Repowise: Set Up This Repository to build the index, or follow the Get Started with Repowise walkthrough.

The extension activates only in trusted workspaces and does no work at startup beyond registering its commands. It discovers a running server automatically, or offers to start one when you first need data.

Know before you push

Analyze Change Risk (Source Control title bar or command palette) scores your uncommitted work against its base branch and opens a panel with the whole story of the change:

  • A summary strip up top: how many files are affected downstream, how many usual companion files you have not touched, and the test recommendations or unavailable/partial/stale analysis state. Each chip jumps to its section.
  • Riskiest files in this change: your changed files ranked by how risky history and structure say they are, so you review in the right order. Files that change unusually often are marked as hotspots.
  • Downstream of your changes: the files that depend on what you edited.
  • Usually changes together: companion files your history says belong to this change but are untouched. Advisory, not a rule.
  • Test impact with measured coverage evidence kept separate from inferred candidates, and suggested reviewers with one-click copy for the PR description.

While you edit, a quiet co-change hint can appear in the status bar when the files you are touching have a strong history of changing together with a file you have not opened. It is dismissible per change set, never a popup, and tunable or off in settings (repowise.changeIntel.*). Plenty of edits legitimately touch only part of a cluster, so it informs without nagging.

The Change Risk panel: an 8.8/10 score, downstream and missing-test chips, and the riskiest files in the change ranked by hotspot

Editor-native signals

  • Gutter heat: a severity-tiered strip next to lines with findings in the visible editor.
  • File health in the status bar: defect, maintainability, and performance scores for the active file; click to open the health dashboard focused on it.
  • File explorer badges on the worst-health files (threshold configurable).
  • Refactoring CodeLens above symbols with a detected plan, including Copy plan for agent (the same payload the web Refactoring tab produces).
  • Hovers: line 1 of a file shows its health scores, primary owner, and governing decisions. Hovering a symbol shows what kind of symbol it is, how many callers and callees it has, who owns the file, and the decisions that govern it. Fetched only when you hover, then cached (repowise.hover.symbolDetail).
  • Diagnostics (off by default): opt in to publish high-severity findings to the Problems panel (repowise.diagnostics.enabled). The quieter surfaces above carry the full detail either way.
Gutter heat strip and the file's health score in the status bar
Gutter heat + status-bar score		 A refactoring plan shown as a CodeLens above the class it targets, with a copy-for-agent action
Refactoring plan as a CodeLens, copy-for-agent

Tree views

A single Repowise activity-bar container with a Home overview, a Findings tree (health, hotspots, ownership, dead code), and a Refactoring tree. All lazy: data is fetched on first expand and refreshed only when the index moves.

Dashboards

Editor-tab webviews rendered from the same shared visualization library the web app uses (no duplicated components): health overview, architecture map, knowledge graph (with node search, path finder, and community detail), refactoring plans, decision timeline, and a docs browser. A theme switcher in the Home view keeps them matched to your editor or pinned light or dark.

The code-health dashboard with defect, maintainability, and performance signals and a health map
Health overview		 The interactive knowledge graph of files and their dependencies
Knowledge graph		 The docs browser rendering the generated wiki for the repository
Docs browser

MCP for your AI agent

One install registers the Repowise MCP server with VS Code, so agent-mode assistants query the index through purpose-built tools instead of guessing from open files. For editors that read a config file, run Repowise: Configure MCP for this Workspace to write .vscode/mcp.json.

VS Code sits at the Good support tier, and the honest version of that is worth knowing before you compare it to the Claude Code or Codex setup. You get the MCP tools and the config to reach them. You do not get hook-level interception: repowise never sees a tool call before it runs, never rewrites a noisy command, and never annotates a result afterwards, and there is no transcript mining after the session. What the extension itself surfaces in the gutter, on hover and in the dashboards is unaffected. Full comparison: INTEGRATIONS.md.

Language Model Tools (Copilot Chat)

In addition to standard MCP tools, the VS Code extension registers 6 native Language Model Tools via VS Code's vscode.lm.registerTool API. When using GitHub Copilot Chat in Agent mode, Copilot can call these tools directly to inspect the Repowise index without requiring external server processes:

Tool Name Parameters Purpose
repowise_searchCodebase query (string), limit (optional number) Hybrid semantic + full-text search over indexed wiki pages. Returns ranked snippets and file targets.
repowise_getFileHealth filePath (string) Defect, maintainability, and performance scores for a file, plus active biomarker findings.
repowise_getRefactoringPlans filePath (string) Refactoring plans targeting symbols in the file, including effort bucket, confidence, and blast radius.
repowise_getBranchRisk base (optional string) Scores uncommitted changes / working HEAD against the base branch, returning risk percentile, review priority, and risk drivers.
repowise_getSymbolInfo filePath (string), symbolName (optional string) Line bounds, primary owner, callers, callees, and governing ADR decisions for indexed symbols.
repowise_getFileDocs filePath (string) Reads the generated Repowise wiki page content for a specified file.

All native LM tools are read-only, bounded (max 30,000 chars per payload to avoid token flooding), and respect workspace boundary checks. Toggle native LM tool availability via repowise.agentTools.enabled in settings.

Settings

The fastest way to tune everything is Repowise: Open Settings, a panel covering every surface with plain-language descriptions. The full list:

Setting Default Purpose
repowise.server.autoStart ask Start the local server automatically, ask first, or never
repowise.server.port discover Override the server port instead of automatic discovery
repowise.cliPath PATH Absolute path to the repowise executable
repowise.agentTools.enabled true Enable or disable native VS Code Language Model Tools for Copilot Chat
repowise.diagnostics.enabled false Publish health findings to the Problems panel
repowise.diagnostics.minSeverity high Lowest severity surfaced in the Problems panel
repowise.diagnostics.dimensions defect, maintainability, performance Health dimensions included in the Problems panel. advisory is selectable and off by default: it never deducts from a score, and it reaches the gutter, the hovers and the language-model tools regardless
repowise.gutterHeat.enabled true Shade the gutter next to findings
repowise.fileDecorations.enabled true Badge the worst-health files in the explorer
repowise.fileDecorations.maxScore 4 Health score at or below which a file is badged
repowise.codeLens.enabled true Show refactoring plan lenses
repowise.hover.enabled true Show health context on hover
repowise.hover.symbolDetail true Callers, ownership, and decisions on symbol hover
repowise.risk.baseBranch default branch Base branch change risk is scored against
repowise.changeIntel.cochangeNudge true Show the quiet "usually change together" status-bar hint
repowise.changeIntel.cochangeMinScore 4 Minimum historical co-change count before a related file is surfaced

Privacy

The extension talks only to the local Repowise CLI and server on your machine and reads the index under .repowise/. It sends no telemetry of its own. The CLI's own telemetry opt-out is respected because the extension itself sends nothing.

The extension source lives in packages/vscode.