Developer Famine

A frictionless developer bragging ledger and standup architect for VS Code. Log your wins and blockers without leaving your IDE, and turn them into a standup update or a running history in one click.

Features

• One-line logging — a single Quick Input box accepts /win, /block (or /blocker), or plain text, and files the entry as the right type automatically.
• Today's Log sidebar — an Activity Bar view showing everything you've logged today, with color-coded icons per type, updating live as you log or delete.
• Copy Standup to Clipboard — formats today's wins, blockers, and notes into a Markdown bulleted list, ready to paste into Slack, a PR description, or a standup doc.
• Dashboard — a full-screen webview showing your entire history, grouped by day, styled like a terminal log (+ win, - blocker, ~ note) using your actual editor font and your color theme's terminal colors.
• 100% local — everything is stored in VS Code's own local storage on your machine. No servers, no accounts, no network calls. See Data & Privacy below.

Installation

This extension isn't published to the Marketplace yet. Until then, install it from source:

git clone https://github.com/remoshan/the-developer-famine.git
cd the-developer-famine
npm install
npm run compile
npx vsce package
code --install-extension the-developer-famine-1-1-1.1.0.vsix

Once published, this section will be replaced with a direct Marketplace link.

Usage

Logging an entry

Open the log input any of these ways:

Then type one of:

/win Fixed the memory leak
/block Waiting on AWS keys
/blocker Waiting on AWS keys
Just a plain note, no prefix needed

/win or /block//blocker typed alone with nothing after it is rejected with a warning — it won't log an empty or literal /win entry.

Why can't I just type /developer-famine <message> into VS Code's global search bar? VS Code's built-in Command Palette and Quick Open are fixed, closed components — extensions cannot make them accept trailing free text as an argument to a command. Selecting a command from the Palette must always open a new Quick Input for further text, which is exactly what "Log Entry" does. This is true for every VS Code extension (Git, GitLens, etc.), not a limitation specific to this one.

Commands

All four are also available as buttons in the sidebar's view title bar.

Data & Privacy

Every entry is stored exclusively in VS Code's ExtensionContext.globalState, persisted locally on your machine (VS Code's per-profile globalStorage folder). This extension makes no network requests of any kind, and the dashboard webview's Content-Security-Policy blocks it from making any even if it tried.

If you use VS Code Settings Sync, your log data is included (opted in via setKeysForSync) and can follow you to other machines signed into the same account. If you don't use Settings Sync, your data stays on this one machine.

Known Limitations

• Multiple windows: if you have two VS Code windows open at once and log an entry in both around the same time, the second write can silently overwrite the first (a structural limit of globalState — it has no cross-process transactions). Logging from a single window at a time avoids this entirely.
• VS Code Profiles: each Profile has isolated storage. Switching profiles will show an empty log — your data isn't deleted, just under the other profile.
• No export/backup command yet: there's currently no way to export your history to a file as a safety net.

Development

git clone https://github.com/remoshan/the-developer-famine.git
cd the-developer-famine
npm install

Press F5 in VS Code (or Run → Start Debugging) to compile and launch an Extension Development Host window with the extension loaded. Use npm run watch in a terminal while iterating, then reload the Extension Development Host window (Ctrl+R) to pick up TypeScript changes; CSS/JS changes in media/ apply on the next time the dashboard panel is opened.

Project structure

src/
  extension.ts       entry point — registers commands, status bar item, midnight refresh
  logStore.ts         globalState-backed storage + /win /block parser
  sidebarProvider.ts   TreeDataProvider for the "Today's Log" view + standup formatter
  dashboardPanel.ts    webview panel host (CSP, data injection, delete round-trip)
media/
  dashboard.css        dashboard styling
  dashboard.js          dashboard rendering logic
resources/
  icon.svg              Activity Bar icon

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at the GitHub repository.

License

MIT