BAL Coding Tracker

A lightweight VS Code extension by BlackAlphaLabs for tracking active coding time, coding sessions, projects, and programming languages.

Version: 1.0.0-beta.1
Release: Beta

✨ Features

• ⏱️ Track active coding time
• 📊 Track individual coding sessions
• 📁 Detect the current project automatically
• 💻 Detect the programming language being edited
• 📝 Store coding activity locally as JSON
• 🕐 Display current coding time directly in the VS Code status bar
• 💤 Automatically stop a session after a period of inactivity
• 🔒 No backend or external service required
• 🌐 Works completely locally

📌 How It Works

BAL Coding Tracker monitors your activity inside VS Code and creates coding sessions based on your active development environment.

A session records information such as:

• Project name
• Workspace path
• Programming language
• Session start time
• Session end time
• Session duration

Example:

{
  "id": "44802163-475a-43f4-becb-1a33978afcba",
  "project": "my-project",
  "workspacePath": "I:\\projects\\my-project",
  "language": "typescript",
  "startedAt": "2026-09-17T05:23:39.503Z",
  "endedAt": "2026-09-17T05:24:44.609Z",
  "durationSeconds": 65
}

💾 Data Storage

• Coding activity is stored locally as a JSON file.

• The extension does not require:

• • A backend server
• • A database
• • An account
• • An API key
• • Cloud synchronization

• Your coding data remains on your local machine.

The stored data contains:

Total coding time
    ↓
Coding sessions
    ├── Project
    ├── Workspace
    ├── Language
    ├── Start time
    ├── End time
    └── Duration

🔒 Privacy

• BAL Coding Tracker is designed with local-first data storage.

• The extension does not require sending your coding activity to a remote server.

• Your project information and coding-session data are stored locally on your machine.

🖥️ Status Bar

• The extension displays your current coding session directly in the VS Code status bar.

Example:

$(clock) Coding: 00:12:35

• Clicking the coding-time indicator can display your accumulated coding time.

🚀 Installation

• Install BAL Coding Tracker from the Visual Studio Code Marketplace.

• After installation:

• • Open VS Code.
• • Open a project or workspace.
• • Start working on your code.
• • BAL Coding Tracker will automatically start tracking your coding session.
• • View the current coding time from the VS Code status bar.

🧪 Beta Release

• This is the first beta release of BAL Coding Tracker.

• The current release focuses on the core local coding-time tracking system.

• Current

• • Active coding session tracking
• • Project detection
• • Language detection
• • Local JSON storage
• • Status bar tracking
• • Session history
• • Idle session handling

• Planned

• Future versions may introduce:

• • Daily coding statistics
• • Weekly and monthly statistics
• • Project-based statistics
• • Language-based statistics
• • Coding-time dashboards
• • More advanced activity detection
• • Optional backend synchronization
• • Online coding profiles
• • Coding-time rankings
• • Cross-device synchronization

🎯 Project Vision

• BAL Coding Tracker is being developed as a local-first coding productivity tracker that can eventually provide developers with a detailed view of how they spend their development time.

• The initial architecture focuses on keeping the VS Code extension independent and functional without requiring a backend.

• Future versions may optionally connect the extension to a backend service for synchronization, dashboards, and developer statistics.

🤝 Contributing

• Contributions, suggestions, bug reports, and feature requests are welcome.

• If you find a problem or have an idea for improving BAL Coding Tracker, please open an issue or submit a pull request in the project repository.

📄 License

• This project is maintained by BlackAlphaLabs.

• See the repository license for the applicable terms.

Developed by BlackAlphaLabs. Jehan Weerasuriya