LaLog

Effortless, local-first work tracking for VS Code. LaLog watches what you're actually doing — edits, saves, terminals, file operations, tasks, and debug sessions — and turns it into a clean, human-readable timeline of your work, with descriptions you add at natural moments instead of status-update chores.

It started as a personal tool and is shaped entirely by real use: no accounts, no cloud, no gamification. Your work data lives in your home directory as append-only JSONL, and everything on screen is driven by it.

Highlights

You open VS Code and just work. LaLog handles the rest:

• Sessions, not timers. Opening a workspace starts tracking automatically — you are never "untracked." If a session ends (auto-close, manual end) and you keep working, a fresh one starts silently at the next event. A session is a continuous thread, bounded by idle time rather than the clock: an overnight run from 22:00 to 02:00 is one session.
• Active-only time. A session's duration is the sum of its active moments and spans, never end − start wall-clock. Idle gaps don't count. If you pop away from your desk and confirm you were actually "still working," that time is counted separately as outside VS Code; say "I was away" instead and that idle stretch is trimmed.
• Descriptions at the right moments. The describe checkpoint waits until the ~90-minute mark, and hourly progress notes fill in between. Every entry is a timestamped note on the session — and whether you answer or not, tracking keeps running. Sessions are never asked about on close.
• A real drill-down UI. The sidebar holds three tabs — Sessions, Insights, Projects. Sessions group by day (most recent open by default); each row is a compact summary (time · workspace — description, duration), and clicking it opens a session-detail document with the in/outside-VS-Code split, event counters, top files, the note timeline, git branch/commits, captured file diffs, terminal commands, and AI interaction metadata. The Insights tab gives at-a-glance totals, a per-day 24-hour timeline you can click to reach the sessions behind an hour, and top files — without opening a file.
• Anonymous when you say so. At any time you can choose Keep as background work — from the describe checkpoint, the panel row action, or the status-bar quick action: the session still tracks everything, but LaLog stops asking for a description. Project your many workspaces onto named, colored projects (claimed by folder, overridable per session), then filter, scope reports, and read insights by project.
• Stops on its own. "Are you still there?" fires after 15 idle minutes so outside-editor work isn't lost — and abandoned sessions are force-closed after 1 hour of inactivity (no continue option) and a fresh session starts automatically — come back, type one key, and a new session picks up where you left off.
• A clock you can act on. The pinned Current Session box runs a live count-up of this session's tracked time (h:mm:ss) beside a small world clock, with nothing but pause, resume, and end — because the tracking is always on; ending a session immediately starts a fresh tracked one.
• Optional AI, off by default. When enabled, a local opencode CLI drafts descriptions, writes report narratives, and reviews your work. It only ever sees the compact session summary (file paths, counters, branch, commit subjects) — never file contents or terminal output.
• Technical detail capture. LaLog captures unified diffs at save time, terminal command metadata (with optional stdout capture), and AI interaction logs — all stored locally and subject to configurable redaction patterns and character limits.

How it looks

 SESSIONS
 ▼ 2026-09-03 — 3 sessions, 5h
   10:00 · my-project — Fix login bug          2h 30m          ✎ 🗑
   wired up the fix                             11:30
   plan from standup, log took over             10:00

Clicking a row opens that session as a markdown document — description, in/outside-VS-Code split, event counters, top files, notes, git, file changes, terminal, and AI activity — in a preview tab. LaLog: Show file diffs for a day does the same for a whole day, and the Insights timeline reaches both.

Reports are session-centric markdown — pick a range (today / yesterday / week / month / any custom span) and a project scope, and single-day reports include an hourly log. Nothing is uploaded anywhere unless you opt into AI.

Quick start

npm install
npm run build
npx @vscode/vsce package --no-dependencies --allow-missing-repository
# install the resulting .vsix (or press F5 in VS Code to run from source)

Open a workspace. That's it — LaLog starts a session, tracks events, and occasionally asks you what you're working on (all prompts are optional and skippable).

Data is written to ~/.lalog/:

~/.lalog/
├── sessions.jsonl            # all closed sessions, append-only
├── projects.json             # curated project registry (claims folders)
├── active/<key>.json         # live session snapshots
├── exports/                  # CSV dumps + files_by_day.txt legacy export
└── reports/YYYY-MM-<range.md> # generated, scope-aware reports

Commands

Key settings

Privacy

• Local-first by default. The extension makes no network calls unless you enable AI or opencode chat activity — the only other network path is a read-only poll of an opencode serve on 127.0.0.1 (one you already run, or one LaLog starts for you with a random password and stops again when it is no longer needed; a serve LaLog did not start is never signalled).
• AI egress is explicit and compact. Only the session summary — file paths, event counters, git branch, commit subjects — leaves your machine, and only when you run an AI feature.
• Redaction built in. Terminal activity flows through lalog.redactPatterns so keys and secrets never land in the log.

Documentation & development

Full docs live in docs/: architecture, ADRs, the JSONL data format, features, and development notes.

npm run typecheck   # TypeScript
npm run build       # bundle (esbuild)
npm test            # unit tests

License

MIT — take it, adapt it, make it yours.