Decision Anchors

See why code is the way it is, without leaving the editor — and record a decision the moment you make one.

An anchor ties a decision to the exact lines it governs. It is not a line number: it stores a content fingerprint and the lines themselves, so it follows the code through refactors, renames and edits, and tells you when the code has drifted away from what the decision claims.

What it does

A design decision gets anchored to the exact lines of code it governs. The anchor survives refactors, renames and line shifts. This extension surfaces that in the editor:

• Gutter dot on every governed line — green tracked, amber drifted, red gone
• CodeLens above the span: why: Idempotency key is the order ID
• Hover for status, match confidence, and a link to the decision note
• "Why does this code exist?" — command palette, for the line at your cursor
• "Bind selection to a decision" — right-click a selection to record a new decision, or add another anchor to an existing one

Requirements

This extension is a front end for the ledger CLI, which does the git work. Install it first:

go install github.com/Din-es/Ledger_c/cmd/ledger@latest

Or download a binary from Releases.

Setup

Point the extension at the binary — in your workspace .vscode/settings.json:

{
  "decisionLedger.binaryPath": "C:/path/to/ledger.exe",
  "decisionLedger.showCodeLens": true
}

Use forward slashes even on Windows; they work and avoid JSON escaping mistakes. If ledger is already on your PATH, you can leave binaryPath alone.

Then, in your repo:

ledger init

Settings

Troubleshooting

Nothing appears. Run ledger list --json in your workspace root. The extension shows exactly what that command returns, so if it is empty or errors, that is the thing to fix.

spawn ledger ENOENT. The binary is not on your PATH — set decisionLedger.binaryPath to its full location.

Links

• Source and full documentation
• Getting started guide
• Report an issue

MIT licensed.