Explore and navigate VS Code Chat conversation history through a visual timeline. Trace your questions, understand how context evolved, and revisit past interactions — all from a dedicated side panel.
Features
Visual timeline of each chat session: every turn is a node colored by status (green = completed, gray = in‑progress, red = error).
Rich node badges: turn index, time (relative or absolute), model name, a </> marker when the answer contains code, response length, tool‑call count, and attached files.
Session picker to switch between recorded chat sessions, sorted by most recent activity.
Full‑text search across prompts and responses within the selected session, highlighting matches.
Detail view showing the full prompt and rendered Markdown answer (with syntax highlighting) and one‑click copy.
Star important turns; stars persist across restarts.
Two layouts: detail (timeline + detail pane) and compact (timeline only). Toggle from the toolbar or the view title.
Safe by design: the webview uses a strict Content‑Security‑Policy, raw HTML in messages is escaped, and nothing is ever uploaded.
How it works
The extension reads VS Code's locally stored chat session files (workspaceStorage/*/chatSessions/*.json). The storage location is resolved automatically from the official extension‑context APIs, with a platform fallback. If automatic detection fails, set the path manually (see settings below).
Settings
Setting
Default
Description
chatTimeline.layout
detail
Timeline layout: detail or compact.
chatTimeline.source
local
Data source: local (read local session files) or participant (reserved).
chatTimeline.storagePath
""
Manual override for the VS Code storage root. Leave empty to auto‑detect.
chatTimeline.refreshDebounceMs
500
Debounce (ms) for file‑watch driven refreshes.
chatTimeline.relativeTime
true
Show relative times (e.g. 5m ago) instead of absolute clock times.
chatTimeline.longThreshold
2000
Character count above which a response is marked as long.
Commands
Chat Timeline: Refresh (chatTimeline.refresh) — reload sessions from disk.
Chat Timeline: Toggle Layout (chatTimeline.toggleLayout) — switch between detail and compact.
Install (from VSIX)
code --install-extension chat-timeline-1.0.0.vsix
Or search for Chat Timeline in the VS Code Extensions Marketplace.
Then open the Chat Timeline view from the Activity Bar.
Develop
npm install
npm run compile # type-check + bundle host & webview
npm test # run unit tests (node:test + tsx)
npm run lint # ESLint
npm run package # produce the .vsix
License
This project is licensed under the terms in the LICENSE file.
