Caspian Taskmaster

A fully-featured, developer-native issue tracker living inside VS Code — with Kanban board, GitHub bidirectional sync, AI-powered triage, metrics dashboard, and native MCP integration for Claude and Gemini.

Features

• Kanban board + table view — toggle between a drag-and-drop Kanban board (5 status columns) and the sortable, filterable table; view preference is remembered
• GitHub bidirectional sync — changes in VS Code push to GitHub Issues; GitHub changes pull back automatically; conflict resolution UI when edits collide
• AI-powered triage — as you type a new issue, priority/type/category suggestions appear based on keyword heuristics and similarity to existing issues
• Metrics dashboard — total/open/closed counts, by-priority/type/status bars, donut chart, 12-week trend sparkline, average days to close — all pure CSS/SVG
• TODO Harvester — scan your workspace for TODO/FIXME/HACK/BUG comments and create issues from them in one click
• Commit integration — closes mod1180 or fixes mod1180 in a commit message auto-sets the issue to Done
• Inline code references — attach file/line positions to issues; gutter icons appear in the editor at the linked lines
• Issue dependencies — blocks/blockedBy relationships with cycle detection
• Rich markdown editor — Text / Markdown tab toggle with full-width rendered preview in the create/edit modal
• Tabbed edit modal — Details, Dependencies, Sprint, Comments, and Logs tabs keep the modal organized
• GitHub issue commenting — view and post GitHub issue comments directly from VS Code; Comments tab appears on synced issues with a live comment count badge, user initials avatars, and compose area
• Sprint planning — create sprints with date ranges and goals, assign issues to sprints with story point estimates
• Milestones — create milestones, assign issues, group the board by milestone
• Bulk operations — select multiple issues, change status/priority/assignee or delete in one action
• Saved views — name and save any filter+sort combination; reload with one click
• Sidebar panel — quick glance at issues without leaving your code
• Complete audit log — every field change logged with author, timestamp, and old/new values
• MCP server — native Claude/Gemini integration at http://127.0.0.1:37521/mcp
• Multi-provider AI engine — connect to VS Code LM API (Copilot) or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint for built-in AI features
• Duplicate Sentinel — semantic duplicate detection surfaces possible duplicates as you create new issues (embeddings with TF-IDF + bigram + Levenshtein fallback)
• Ghost Writer — AI pre-fills new issues from your current editor context (file, selection, diagnostics, git diff)
• Natural Language Command Bar — type sentences like "show critical bugs on iOS" to filter, update, create, or query issues

Fields per issue

Setup

1. Install the extension

cd caspian-taskmaster
npm install
npm run compile
# Then press F5 in VS Code to launch Extension Development Host

2. Connect to GitHub (optional)

Run command palette → Caspian Taskmaster: Configure GitHub Repo

You'll be prompted for:

• GitHub PAT — create at https://github.com/settings/tokens (needs repo scope)
• Owner — your GitHub username or org
• Repo — repository name

GitHub is optional — all features work locally without it.

3. Open the tracker

• Sidebar: click the Caspian Taskmaster icon in the activity bar
• Full tab: command palette → Caspian Taskmaster: Open Full Tracker

GitHub sync

Issues sync automatically every 5 minutes (configurable). Manual sync: click the sync button in the status bar or run Caspian Taskmaster: Sync with GitHub.

The status bar shows your owner/repo name and a persistent sync indicator — green with "✓ 2m ago" after a successful sync, red with "✗" after a failure. Hover for exact timestamps and the next auto-sync countdown.

How it works:

• Local issues are tagged with a local-id:mod1180 label on GitHub so IDs stay stable
• Status, priority, type, platform, and category are stored as GitHub labels (status:Ongoing, priority:High, etc.)
• The full description, code references, and change log are written into the GitHub issue body as markdown
• Deletion sync: deleting an issue locally closes the corresponding GitHub issue (with a deleted-locally label) on the next sync, preventing re-import
• Conflict resolution: if a sync detects both local edits and a newer GitHub version, a conflict is flagged; run Resolve Sync Conflicts to pick field-by-field which version to keep
• Issue commenting: synced issues show a Comments tab in the edit modal where you can view and post GitHub issue comments directly from VS Code; comments are fetched live on-demand, not stored locally

Commit integration

When you commit with a message like:

fix: handle null session on login — closes mod1185

Caspian Taskmaster automatically sets mod1185 status to Done. Use ref instead of closes/fixes to just add a log entry without changing the status.

Enable/disable via caspianTaskmaster.commitWatcherEnabled setting.

TODO Harvester

Click Harvest TODOs in the tracker toolbar (or run the command palette command). Caspian Taskmaster scans your workspace for TODO, FIXME, HACK, and BUG comments across all configured source file extensions, presents them in a QuickPick, and creates an issue pre-populated with the file/line code reference.

Configure scanned extensions via caspianTaskmaster.todoFileExtensions.

AI integration

Option 1: Copy as AI prompt (works with any AI)

Click the 📋 button on any issue row. This puts a structured markdown block in your clipboard — paste into Claude, Gemini, or any other AI chat.

Option 2: MCP server (native Claude / Gemini integration)

Caspian Taskmaster runs a local MCP server at http://127.0.0.1:37521/mcp.

Add to Claude VS Code extension:

// settings.json
{
  "claude.mcpServers": {
    "caspian-taskmaster": {
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:37521/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Add to Gemini VS Code extension:

{
  "geminicodeassist.mcpServers": [
    { "name": "caspian-taskmaster", "url": "http://127.0.0.1:37521/mcp" }
  ]
}

Twelve MCP tools:

Configuration

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