ActionTracker

A local-first VS Code extension for managing action items, responsibilities (PDCA), digital assets, benefits, risks, and governance forums—all without leaving your editor.

⚠️ Experiment Only: This extension is evolving rapidly. Features, field shapes, and workflows may change between releases.

Installation

Search for ActionTracker in the VS Code Extensions Marketplace, or:

1. Open VS Code
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+X (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+X (Mac) to open Extensions
3. Search for "ActionTracker"
4. Click Install

Getting Started

By default ActionTracker is turned off (to avoid impacting startup time). To enable it:

1. Open Settings
2. Search for ActionTracker
3. Enable actiontracker.enabled

After enabling it, ActionTracker appears in two places:

• Activity Bar: Click the ActionTracker icon to browse your data in tree views
• Panel: The Actions view shows all your action items at a glance

Access Panel (default)

When ActionTracker is enabled, it opens the Access Panel on startup. This is a launcher with buttons for the key dashboards, visual maps, forum views, and common actions.

To reopen it any time:

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+P (Mac)
2. Run ActionTracker: Open Access Panel

Dashboards

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+P (Mac)
2. Run ActionTracker: Open Action Dashboard or ActionTracker: Open Data Dashboard
3. Press Enter

Dashboards provide a visual overview of your data with tabs for each type.

Features

Core Tracking (Experiment Only)

• Actions: status, priority, due dates, owners, role-based effort, and timeline support.
• Responsibilities (PDCA): Plan → Do → Check → Act lifecycle with relationship linking across key entities.
• Digital Assets: register and relationship mapping with linked controls/risks and asset-focused analysis views.
• Benefits: lifecycle tracking, categories, and benefit-assurance reporting workflows.
• Forums: governance cadence, chairs, attendees, notes, and action/forum linkage.

Risk and Governance Models (Experiment Only)

• Risks, Risk Scenarios, Risk Appetite: linked risk structures, scenario and appetite detail views, and relationship actions.
• Controls, Policies, Processes, Roles: governance architecture with cross-linking (for example role-policy-process and policy-control links).
• Requirements (including Directives): domain-tagged requirements with Directive support and editable detail forms.

Advanced Operational Domains (Experiment Only)

• Recommendations: recommendation workspace with lifecycle and linkage context.
• Investigations: investigation workspace with structured detail views and evidence-oriented exports.
• Suppliers: supplier records, detail views, calendar scheduling flows, and optional enrichment via MCP command paths.
• People: sensitive profile support with team classification, quick filtering, direct role linking, and formal PDF export.
• Strategy Cycles, Threat Cycles, Outcomes: cycle and outcome entities with create/open detail flows and dashboard support.

Workspaces and Visual Views (Experiment Only)

• Access Panel as startup launcher for key dashboards and views.
• Action Dashboard and Data Workspace for tabbed operational management.
• Additional visual and specialist views including reports, benefit assurance, strategy/threat dashboards, The Tree, organisational digital twin, asset review/report/relationships, governance workflow, forum overview/workspace, ISMS library, and role play.

Search, Relationship Editing, and Recovery (Experiment Only)

• Cross-entity search command for quick navigation.
• Detail-panel relationship editing with linked-item navigation and delete confirmation UX.
• Soft-delete support with undo, restore, and permanent delete flows.

Export and Integration Utilities (Experiment Only)

• JSON import/export for dataset backup and restore.
• Markdown and calendar export utilities for actions/forums.
• Investigation export set (Markdown, PDF, JSON, ZIP).
• Person profile PDF export.
• Optional integration hooks for 6clicks risk sync and MCP-based supplier enrichment.

Using ActionTracker

Creating Items

Quick Create (Wizard):

• Right-click in any tree view and select "New Action", "New Digital Asset", etc.
• Follow the step-by-step prompts

From Dashboard:

• Open the dashboard and use the "Add" buttons in each tab

From Command Palette:

• "ActionTracker: Create Responsibility Item" to add a new responsibility

Viewing & Editing

Click any item in the tree views or dashboard to open its Detail View:

• See all fields in a clean, formatted display
• Click Edit to modify fields inline
• Click linked items to navigate between related data
• Click Delete to remove (with confirmation)

Tree Views

• Actions by Forum: See actions grouped under their governance forums
• Digital Asset Register: Browse digital assets
• Legacy Assets: Browse legacy asset mappings and links
• Forums: See all forums and their upcoming meetings
• Risk Scenarios: Track scenario-led risk narratives
• Risk Appetite: Track appetite statements by domain
• Recommendations: Track recommendation records
• Investigations: Track investigation records
• Suppliers: Track supplier/vendor entities
• People: Track internal team members and external partners with role links and team filters
• Recently Deleted: Recover or permanently delete items
• Tagged Items: Filter and jump to items by tag

All tree views are Experiment Only and may change as the model evolves.

Notes:

• Actions by Forum is a derived view (it groups existing Actions under Forums), not a separate data type.
• Recently Deleted is a utility view for the soft-delete bin across entity types.

Import & Export

• Export: Command Palette → "ActionTracker: Export Data" → Save JSON backup
• Import: Command Palette → "ActionTracker: Import Data" → Load from JSON file

Default Data

The dashboard Actions tab includes buttons to help you get started quickly:

• Add Default Data: merges the built-in starter dataset into your current data (non-destructive)
• Load Default Data: replaces your current dataset with the built-in starter dataset

Copilot Chat Integration

If you have GitHub Copilot Chat (VS Code 1.93+), mention @ActionTrackerCopilot to:

• Ask questions: "What actions are overdue?" or "Show me high-priority risks"
• Create items: create action {"summary":"Review policy","status":"open"}
• Create items: create responsibility {"title":"Own vendor access reviews","domain":"govern"}
• Update items: update action <id> {"status":"completed"}
• List items: list actions
• Create a directive requirement: create requirement {"framework":"PSPF 2025","code":"DIR-001","title":"Protective Security Direction","description":"...","domain":"Directives"}

Settings

Access via Settings → Extensions → ActionTracker.

Data Storage

All data is stored locally on your machine—no cloud, no accounts, no external dependencies.

Location: ~/.vscode/extensions/tobyharvey.actiontracker-*/globalStorage/actiontracker-data.json

Keyboard Shortcuts

Tip: You can customise these shortcuts in VS Code's Keyboard Shortcuts settings (Ctrl+K Ctrl+S / Cmd+K Cmd+S).

Support

• Issues: GitHub Issues
• Repository: GitHub

License

MIT

Development

Debugging

This repo includes VS Code launch configs for debugging the extension:

• Run Extension: launches an Extension Host with ActionTracker installed
• Extension Tests: launches Extension Host tests

These use the default build task (npm run watch) and attach breakpoints to the compiled output in dist/ via source maps.

Tests

• npm test runs the Vitest suite
• npm run test:deployment bundles the extension and runs deployment verification tests

The test suite includes a contract test that validates .vscode/launch.json and .vscode/tasks.json stay compatible with efficient debugging.