Flower Grow 🌸

Watch a flower grow in your VS Code status bar as you write code. It takes your chosen amount of real, active coding time (40, 50, or 60 minutes) to go from a seed to a full bloom — a gentle nudge to take a break once it's done.

How It Works

By default, Flower Grow watches for actual editing activity in the editor. Every second you're typing counts toward your flower's growth; if you stop for longer than your idle threshold (5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes — reading docs, in a meeting, grabbing coffee), growth pauses until you start typing again. Simply having VS Code open in the background doesn't count — only real focused work does.

If you'd rather have growth track wall-clock time instead, switch to Always On mode (see Settings below) and it'll grow continuously whenever VS Code is open, regardless of activity.

Once your flower reaches 100%, it blooms, you get a notification reminding you to take a break, and a brand new seed is planted automatically so the cycle continues.

Growth Stages

Stage	Icon	Progress
Seed	🌰	0%
Sprout	🌱	5%
Seedling	🌿	25%
Budding	🌷	50%
Almost There	🌼	80%
Bloomed	🌸	100%

The current stage and percentage are always visible in the status bar, so it's a quiet, ambient companion rather than an intrusive timer.

Your Garden

Every flower you fully grow is saved to your personal Garden. Click the status bar item at any time to open a quick menu (Show Garden, Set Growth Duration, Set Tracking Mode, Set Idle Threshold, Replant), or run any of these individually from the Command Palette. Show Garden opens a panel showing:

Your currently growing flower and its progress
Every flower you've ever harvested, with the date and time it bloomed

Your garden persists across VS Code restarts, so nothing is lost between sessions.

Commands

Command	Description
`Flower Grow: Show Garden`	Opens the garden panel with your current flower and full collection
`Flower Grow: Replant`	Discards the flower currently growing and plants a fresh seed
`Flower Grow: Set Growth Duration`	Quick-pick to choose 40, 50, or 60 minutes
`Flower Grow: Set Tracking Mode`	Quick-pick to switch between Active Coding and Always On
`Flower Grow: Set Idle Threshold`	Quick-pick to choose 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes (Active Coding mode only)

Why Use This

Flower Grow isn't a productivity tracker or a pomodoro timer — there's no score, no streaks to protect, no guilt if you skip a day. It's just a small, satisfying visual signal that your focused effort is quietly adding up, one flower at a time.

Settings

Setting	Description	Default
`flowerGrow.growthDuration`	How many minutes it takes for a flower to fully bloom. Choose 40, 50, or 60.	`60`
`flowerGrow.trackingMode`	`activeCoding` (pauses when idle) or `alwaysOn` (tracks wall-clock time regardless of activity).	`activeCoding`
`flowerGrow.idleThreshold`	In Active Coding mode, how many minutes without typing before growth pauses. Choose 5, 10, 15, or 30.	`5`

Requirements

No accounts, no external services — install and it works immediately.

Known Limitations

Growth progress and your garden are stored locally per machine (via VS Code's global storage) and are not synced across devices or installs.

Release Notes

0.0.3

Added Active Coding / Always On tracking modes, a configurable idle threshold (5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes), and quick-pick commands (plus a status bar quick menu) for choosing growth duration, tracking mode, and idle threshold. Fixed a bug where a flower already at 100% would never actually bloom/notify.

0.0.2

Configurable growth duration (40 / 50 / 60 minutes), bloom notification now reminds you to take a break, updated icon.

0.0.1

Initial release: status bar growth tracking, six growth stages, persistent garden view, and replant command.

Flower Grow

Developer in Training