Code Illusion

Make your code speak Chinese — or Japanese, Korean, Pirate, Leet, Emoji, Klingon… One click to translate, one click to get everything back. Exactly as it was.

Français

Code Illusion is a visual illusion, not a refactoring tool. Your program keeps running exactly the same, because by default nothing in your file changes — the translation is painted over the editor with decorations.

// before                                  // after (preview mode)
export async function getUserConfig() {    导出 异步 函数 获取用户配置() {
  const response = await fetchData();        常量 响应 = 等待 拉取数据();
  if (!response) return null;                如果 (!响应) 返回 空;
}                                          }

Features

• Instant. Translating a 10 000-line file takes a few milliseconds; only the visible part of the file is ever decorated.
• Perfectly reversible. Preview mode never touches the buffer. Write mode keeps a verbatim snapshot plus a per-replacement undo log, and a local history that survives a window reload.
• 13 languages built in: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pirate, Leet, Emoji, Latin, Hieroglyphs, Alien, Binary, Morse, Matrix, Klingon.
• Works everywhere: JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Vue, Svelte, Python, Go, Rust, PHP, Java, C#, C/C++, HTML, CSS, SCSS, JSON, YAML, Markdown, SQL, Ruby, Lua, shell… and anything else, thanks to a generic fallback.
• Selection support. Translate (or restore) just the lines you highlighted.
• One panel for everything. A native side panel in the activity bar — plain monochrome icons, no emoji anywhere in the interface.
• Extensible by design. A new language is one file exporting a dictionary.

Usage

Open the Code Illusion icon in the activity bar. Everything lives in one panel: translate or restore, pick a language, switch mode, and toggle what gets translated — one click per row, no dialog, no configuration file to edit.

You can also use the status bar item, the keyboard (Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+T to toggle, Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+L for the language menu) or the command palette.

The two modes

Write mode always snapshots the original before changing anything. If the file changed since it was translated, restoring asks for confirmation instead of silently overwriting your work.

Settings

Installation

From the Marketplace: search for Code Illusion in the Extensions view, or

code --install-extension devcraft.code-illusion

From a local build:

npm install
npm run package          # produces code-illusion-1.0.0.vsix
code --install-extension code-illusion-1.0.0.vsix

Adding a language

Create src/translator/languages/yourLanguage.ts:

import type { LanguagePack } from '../types';

export const yourLanguage: LanguagePack = {
  id: 'yours',
  label: 'Your language',
  icon: '🎈',
  description: 'What it does',
  keywords: { if: '…', return: '…' },
  identifiers: { user: '…', data: '…' }, // keys must be lowercase
  words: { hello: '…' },                 // used inside comments
  joiner: 'concat',                      // or 'preserve' to keep _ and camelCase
  transform: (word) => undefined         // optional algorithmic fallback
};

Register it in src/translator/registry.ts and add its id to the codeIllusion.defaultLanguage enum in package.json. Nothing else changes — the engine, the UI and the commands are language-agnostic.

Known limitations

• In preview mode the real text is still under the overlay: selecting, searching and moving the caret work on the original characters. That is deliberate — it is what keeps the illusion perfectly safe.
• The translation is word-based and intentionally naive. It is an illusion, not a translator.

Contributing

See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.

License

MIT