Brevity

Brevity is a work-in-progress Visual Studio Code extension for reducing token usage in AI-assisted development workflows.

The project is at an early stage. The extension scaffold is in place, while the token-reduction functionality is still being designed and implemented.

Current status

At present, Brevity provides a basic Hello World command to verify the extension lifecycle and development setup. It is not yet ready for production use or published on the Visual Studio Code Marketplace.

Planned areas of work include:

• identifying redundant or low-value context before it is sent to an AI tool;
• reducing prompts and workspace context while preserving useful information;
• making token savings visible and understandable;
• integrating smoothly with existing VS Code workflows.

Requirements

• Visual Studio Code 1.140.0 or newer for development and testing;
• Node.js and npm.

Development

Clone the repository, install dependencies, and open the project in VS Code:

npm install
code .

Press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P or Cmd+Shift+P on macOS) and run Hello World.

Scripts

npm run lint
npm test

The test command runs the extension test suite and the configured lint checks.

Extension details

The extension currently contributes one command:

No user settings are currently contributed.

Contributing

Contributions and ideas are welcome while the project takes shape. Please focus changes on the extension's core goal: reducing unnecessary token usage without making AI-assisted development less useful.

Before submitting a change, run:

npm run lint
npm test

Known limitations

• Token-reduction behavior has not been implemented yet.
• The extension is not published to the Marketplace.
• The command and API surface may change during development.

License

No license has been declared yet.