Gnosis AI
Understand and improve how AI agents work in your codebase. Gnosis AI brings semantic code search, conversation cost & quality insights, agent attribution, and a built-in agent chat into VS Code — so you can see what your AI tools did, why, and how to make them more effective.
Features
🔍 Semantic code search
Describe what you're looking for in plain language and get the most relevant code locations, ranked by meaning rather than keywords (powered by the Embark CLI).
- Natural-language search panel in the Gnosis activity-bar view
- Right-click any selection → Gnosis: Search Selected Text
- Quick search keybinding (
Ctrl+Alt+S)
- Click any result to jump to the file at the exact line
💬 Conversation insights (trajectories)
Open any Claude session for the workspace as a trajectory panel in the editor area and turn raw transcripts into something you can act on:
- Optimize conversation cost — see where tokens and turns are spent and trim the context the agent doesn't need.
- Analyze conversation quality — effectiveness scores and per-task reports show how well the agent actually did.
- Classify tasks & scopes of work — sessions are broken into discrete tasks, giving a readable trajectory of what happened.
- Built-in knowledgebase — related conversations, code, and decisions are linked automatically so prior context is one click away.
🧭 AI Blame
See which AI agent and which conversation last touched a line of code — git-blame, but for your AI tools.
🤖 Built-in agent chat
Chat with coding agents directly inside VS Code over the Agent Client Protocol — Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, and more. Gnosis layers analysis on top: task separators, effectiveness scores, related-context hints, and an optional context-optimization mode that trims unrelated history from what the agent sends to the model.
📊 Stats & Status
A Stats tab summarizes activity across your conversations, and a Status panel reports the health of the underlying CLIs and indexing.
🕸️ Flows — call-graph navigator (experimental, opt-in)
Navigate your codebase by call graph and wire call-graph tools into a Claude agent in the project. Off by default; enable it from the Status panel's Call Graph section.
Requirements
| Requirement |
Needed for |
Notes |
Python 3.8+ on your PATH |
Conversation insights, AI Blame, agent chat |
Hard prerequisite for the Gnosis-backed surfaces. If missing, those views aren't registered and a Gnosis: Python required status item appears. |
| Anthropic API key |
Conversation insights & effectiveness scoring |
Stored securely in VS Code Secret Storage. Set it via Gnosis: Set Claude API Key. Search and the basic chat panel work without it. |
The first time you open a workspace, Gnosis bootstraps its helper tooling automatically — including the Embark CLI that powers semantic search. No manual install steps for the core features. (Advanced: point air.cliPath at a custom Embark binary if you'd rather not use the auto-installed one.)
Getting started
- Install the extension and open a workspace (a Git repository works best).
- Open the Gnosis view from the activity bar.
- Run Gnosis: Set Claude API Key from the Command Palette to unlock conversation insights and effectiveness scoring.
- Browse Conversations to open any session as a trajectory, or start a chat from the AI Blame view.
- Use the Search tab (or
Ctrl+Alt+S) for semantic code search.
Your Anthropic key is stored in VS Code's encrypted Secret Storage and is never written to settings.json.
Settings
Settings live under the air.* namespace. The most useful ones:
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
air.cliPath |
"embark" |
Path to the Embark CLI for semantic search (supports ~). |
air.maxResults |
20 |
Maximum number of search results to display. |
air.extraArgs |
[] |
Extra arguments appended to every embark search call. |
air.defaultAcpAgent |
"" |
Preferred agent for new chats when no provider-specific config matches. |
air.chatDefaultMode |
"accept-edits" |
Default permission mode applied to new agent chat panels. |
air.optimizeContext |
false |
Trim unrelated prior-task context from what the agent sends to the model (reversible). |
air.callGraph.enabled |
false |
Experimental. Master switch for the Flows / call-graph integration. |
The Anthropic API key is not a setting — set it with the Gnosis: Set Claude API Key command.
Privacy
- The Anthropic API key is stored only in VS Code Secret Storage.
- Conversation insights run against Claude session files already on your machine.
- Semantic search runs locally through the Embark CLI.
Development
npm install
npm run compile # build extension (out/) + webviews (media/)
npm run watch # rebuild on change
npm test # fast unit tests
npm run package # produce a .vsix
Press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host with the extension loaded. See CLAUDE.md for the full architecture overview and test layers.
