Hello Bible

A quiet, native-feeling companion for reading and keeping a Bible verse without ever leaving VS Code.

Why Hello Bible exists

Hello Bible was built as a hands-on exploration of the VS Code Extension API: webview views, view containers, QuickPick, event-driven state, all in service of producing something genuinely nice to have open every day. A small, contemplative space inside the editor, next to the file tree, that surfaces an encouraging verse without asking for any attention beyond a glance.

Features

Daily verse, right in the Explorer

A collapsible Hello Bible section sits at the bottom of the Explorer sidebar, alongside your file tree. It shows one verse per day: reference, text, and today's date, picked deterministically from a curated pool based on the calendar date. The pick resets exactly at midnight in your own computer's local timezone, not UTC, so the "today" you see always matches the today on your clock.

Favorite the verses that matter to you

A single tap on ☆ Adicionar aos favoritos saves the current verse; tap again to remove it. Favoriting is instant and syncs live between every screen of the extension, no reload required.

A dedicated home for your favorites

An icon in the Activity Bar opens a panel listing every verse you've favorited, each with its reference, full text, and the date you favorited it, plus a one-click button to remove it. First time here with nothing saved yet? You get a friendly empty state instead of a blank panel.

Make it yours

A gear icon in the "Hello Bible" section's title bar opens a picker with 8 curated accent colors, or "Padrão", which simply follows your editor theme's own link color. Whichever you choose drives the icon, divider, reference text, border, and background glow across both screens at once, live.

One glance from anywhere

Run Bible: Show Verse from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) to see today's verse as a native notification, without opening the sidebar at all.

Verses that are never hardcoded

Every verse's text is fetched live, in Portuguese, from a free public Bible API, never bundled or baked into the extension. The reference pool itself is a curated list of around 50 well-known, encouraging passages spanning both testaments, chosen specifically to keep the daily read motivational rather than random.

Looks native in your theme

Every color in both webviews derives from VS Code's own theme variables, with sensible fallbacks, so Hello Bible looks at home in light, dark, high-contrast, and custom themes alike, with zero configuration.

Built with

TypeScript: the entire extension, strict mode on.
VS Code Extension API: WebviewView, view containers, QuickPick, EventEmitter-driven reactivity.
bible-api.com: free, public, no API key, used for live verse text in the Portuguese Almeida translation.
Vitest: unit tests for the service layer.
ESLint + typescript-eslint: linting.
Prettier: formatting.

Architecture

The codebase is organized by responsibility, so each layer can change independently:

src/
├── commands/    → Command Palette / QuickPick handlers
├── data/        → static curated data (verse references, accent colors)
├── models/      → shared TypeScript types
├── providers/   → VS Code webview controllers (wiring only, no HTML)
├── services/    → business logic and persisted state (favorites, accent color, verse fetching)
├── utils/       → small shared utilities (a dependency-free event emitter)
└── webview/     → pure functions that render HTML/CSS (no VS Code API in sight)

Providers never build HTML themselves; they call into webview/, which returns plain strings and knows nothing about VS Code. Services never touch the DOM. This keeps each layer testable and easy to reason about in isolation.

Requirements

Visual Studio Code ^1.125.0.
An internet connection, to fetch verse text from bible-api.com.

Extension Settings

Hello Bible doesn't add anything to settings.json. Personalization (the accent color) is handled through the Bible: Select Accent Color command instead, reachable from the gear icon in the Explorer section's title bar.

Known Issues

Only one translation is available today (Portuguese, João Ferreira de Almeida).
No offline caching: a verse can't be displayed without an internet connection.
The curated reference pool (~50 verses) will keep growing in future releases.

Roadmap

More translations and languages.
A larger, categorized reference pool.
Insert the current verse directly into the active editor.
An optional daily reminder/notification.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. To run the extension locally:

npm install
npm run compile

Then press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host with Hello Bible loaded.

Useful scripts:

npm run watch: recompile on every change.
npm run lint: run ESLint over src.
npm run format: format the project with Prettier.
npm test: run the unit test suite.

Following extension guidelines

This extension follows the official Visual Studio Code extension guidelines.

Extension Guidelines

Author

Built by Artur Bomtempo.

License

Released under the MIT License.

Enjoy!