Chronos History is a professional-grade time-travel extension for Visual Studio that tracks your file changes automatically and provides advanced Git integration. Never lose a line of code again.
🚀 Key Features
🕒 Smart Timelines
Local History: Automatic snapshots captured every time you save (Ctrl+S).
History for Selection: Precision tracking. Highlight a block of code to see its specific evolution over time, even as lines shift.
Project History: A global "Activity Feed" showing all modifications across every file in your project.
Recent Changes: Quick access to your last 50 modifications for rapid context switching.
🌿 Advanced Git Integration
Show Git History: Full file-level commit history directly in the Chronos view.
Git History for Selection: View only the commits that modified your currently selected lines.
Compare with Branch: Professional side-by-side comparison between your current file and any branch (Local or Remote/Origin).
Failsafe Core: Seamlessly switches between high-performance LibGit2Sharp and the system Git CLI, ensuring 100% reliability on Windows.
📊 Powerful Visualizations
Interactive History Graph: A beautiful, node-edge visualization using vis-network.js. See how your files and labels relate over time.
Code Heatmap: Direct editor decorations. Colors lines by "age" (Red < 24h, Orange < 1w, Yellow < 1m) based on Git blame.
🤖 AI & Utilities
AI Commit Messages: Generates professional, Conventional Commit drafts based on your recent local history using Google Gemini AI.
Put Label: Create manual "named checkpoints" for important milestones.
Export/Import: Backup or restore your entire local history as a portable ZIP file.
🛠 Context Menu Overview
Access all features by right-clicking in your code editor or Solution Explorer:
Chronos History
├─ Show History (File-specific timeline)
├─ Show History for Selection (History for selected lines)
├───────────────────────────
├─ Show Git History (Git commits for current file)
├─ Git History for Selection (Git commits for selected lines)
├─ Compare with Branch... (Side-by-side with other branches)
├───────────────────────────
├─ Show Project History (Global timeline of all changes)
├─ Show History Graph (Interactive node-edge visualization)
├─ Show Recent Changes (Quick view of latest activity)
├─ Toggle Code Heatmap (Line-level activity visualization)
├─ Put Label (Create a named checkpoint)
├─ Generate Commit Message (AI draft based on local history)
├───────────────────────────
├─ Export History (Backup to ZIP)
├─ Import History (Restore from ZIP)
⚙️ Configuration
Configure the AI and other settings in Tools -> Options -> Chronos History -> AI Settings:
Model: Choose your preferred model (Default: gemini-2.0-flash).
Language: Set the language for generated commit messages.
📦 Installation & Requirements
Visual Studio: 2022 (Community, Pro, or Enterprise).
Environment: Works on Windows x64, x86, and ARM64.
Git: Works best with Git installed in your system PATH.
🏗 Architecture
Frontend: Responsive HTML5/JavaScript rendered via Microsoft WebView2.
Backend: C# / .NET Framework 4.7.2.
Native Power: Uses direct Win32 DLLs for performance with automatic CLI fallback for compatibility.
🤝 Integrations
Chronos History Diff Desktop App
Enhance your history tracking experience with the Chronos History Diff Desktop App. This standalone application works in synergy with the Visual Studio extension to provide:
A dedicated, high-performance desktop interface for navigating Chronos local history.
Editable side-by-side Monaco diffs for deep version comparison.
Advanced comparison tools and full-screen visualization of your local history.
Use it standalone or pair it with this VS Code extension to unlock local file snapshots and leverage a powerful comparison environment.
