Byte AI Assistant

A powerful AI-powered coding assistant for VS Code that helps developers write, analyze, refactor, and optimize code.

Architecture Overview

✨ Features

• 🤖 AI Chat: Interact with AI models directly in VS Code
• 🔍 Code Analysis: Get detailed explanations and insights about your code
• 🛠️ Code Refactoring: Improve your code with AI-powered suggestions
• 📝 Documentation Generation: Create comprehensive documentation for your codebase
• 🧪 Test Generation: Automatically generate unit tests for your code
• 🚀 Performance Optimization: Receive suggestions to optimize and improve performance
• 📊 Code Issue Detection: Find potential bugs, vulnerabilities, and code smells
• 🐛 Bug Finder: Automatically detect and fix terminal errors with AI
  • Monitors terminal output for error messages in real-time
  • Provides AI-powered error analysis and solutions
  • Allows one-click application of suggested fixes
  • Includes permanent status bar indicator for monitoring status

🧠 Supported AI Providers

Byte supports multiple AI providers to fit your preference and needs:

• OpenAI (GPT-3.5-Turbo, GPT-4, GPT-4-Turbo)
• Google Gemini (Gemini 1.5 Flash, Gemini 1.5 Pro)
• Anthropic Claude (Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3 Sonnet, Claude 3 Haiku)
• Local models (via Ollama - supports Llama3, CodeLlama, Mistral, Mixtral, Neural-Chat, Phi)

🛠️ Installation

VS Code Marketplace

1. Open VS Code
2. Go to Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X or Cmd+Shift+X)
3. Search for "Byte AI Assistant"
4. Click Install

Manual Installation

Download the .vsix file from the releases page and install it using:

code --install-extension byte-0.1.1.vsix

From Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/tuncer-byte/byte.git

# Navigate to the directory
cd byte

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build and package the extension
npm run vscode:prepublish

# Install the extension from the local .vsix file
code --install-extension byte-0.1.1.vsix

🚀 Getting Started

1. Install the extension from the VS Code marketplace or using the manual method above
2. Open the Byte panel by clicking the Byte icon in the activity bar
3. Configure your AI provider using the /configure command in the chat panel
   • You'll need an API key for most providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google)
   • For local models, ensure Ollama is running with your preferred model
4. Start using the features via:
   • Chat panel in the sidebar
   • Right-click context menu on selected code
   • Command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P or Cmd+Shift+P)
   • Keyboard shortcuts

💡 Key Features

AI Chat

Use the chat panel to have conversations with the AI. You can:

• Ask general coding questions
• Request code examples
• Discuss software architecture
• Use slash commands for specialized tasks

Code Analysis

Select any code in your editor and use "Analyze Selected Code" to get:

• Line-by-line explanation of how the code works
• Potential issues and improvement suggestions
• Best practices recommendations
• Time and space complexity analysis

Bug Finder

The Bug Finder feature automatically monitors your terminal for errors and provides AI-powered solutions.

How to use Bug Finder

1. Start Error Monitoring

   • Use the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P or Cmd+Shift+P)
   • Select "Byte: Start Terminal Error Monitoring"
   • A notification will appear, and a status bar indicator will show monitoring is active

2. Automatic Error Detection

   • When an error occurs in the terminal, it's automatically detected
   • You'll receive a notification with the option to analyze the error with AI
   • Click "Analyze Error with AI" to get a solution

3. Manual Error Analysis

   • Use the command "Byte: Analyze Error Message" to manually analyze errors
   • Paste the error message when prompted
   • The AI will analyze the error and suggest solutions

4. Solution Panel

   • The AI solution is displayed in a panel showing:
     • Root cause of the error
     • Technical explanation
     • Step-by-step solution
     • Preventive measures for the future
   • You can apply suggested commands or code changes directly from the panel

5. Stop Monitoring

   • Use the command "Byte: Stop Terminal Error Monitoring" to stop
   • Or click on the status bar indicator to turn it off

⌨️ Commands and Shortcuts

Main Commands

Chat Slash Commands

Bug Finder Commands

Keyboard Shortcuts

🧩 Extension Settings

Byte AI Assistant provides several configuration options:

You can configure these settings through:

• VS Code Settings UI
• /configure command in the chat
• Directly editing settings.json

👨‍💻 Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v16+)
• npm or yarn
• Visual Studio Code

Project Structure

The codebase follows a modular architecture:

src/
├── commands/              # Command handling and management
│   ├── handlers/          # Command handler implementations
│   ├── utils/             # Command-related utilities
│   ├── index.ts           # CommandManager that registers all commands
│   └── types.ts           # Command-related type definitions
│
├── services/              # Core services
│   ├── ai/                # AI service and providers
│   │   ├── providers/     # Implementation for different AI providers
│   │   ├── types/         # Type definitions for AI-related features
│   │   └── utils/         # AI-related utility functions
│   │
│   └── bug-finder/        # Bug finder functionality
│       ├── utils/         # Error parsing and analysis utilities
│       └── types.ts       # Bug finder type definitions
│
├── views/                 # UI components and panels
│   ├── chat/              # Main chat panel implementation
│   └── inline-chat/       # Inline code chat functionality
│
├── extension.ts           # Main extension entry point
└── utils.ts               # Shared utility functions

Key Components

1. extension.ts: The main entry point that activates the extension and initializes all services
2. AI Service: Manages communication with different AI providers (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, Local)
3. Command Manager: Registers and handles all VS Code commands
4. Chat Panel: Implements the main chat interface in the sidebar
5. Inline Code Chat: Implements the focused code analysis chat interface
6. Bug Finder Service: Monitors terminal output for errors and provides AI-powered solutions

Building and Running

# Watch mode for development
npm run watch

# Build for production
npm run compile

# Lint the code
npm run lint

# Run tests
npm run test

To debug the extension:

1. Open the project in VS Code
2. Press F5 to launch a new instance of VS Code with the extension loaded
3. You can set breakpoints in your code for debugging

Using Proposed APIs

For features like the Bug Finder that use proposed VS Code APIs, you need to enable them in development:

code --enable-proposed-api byte.byte

🔒 Privacy and Security

• Your code is processed according to the privacy policy of the AI provider you choose
• Code is sent to AI providers only when you explicitly request analysis
• No code is stored or logged by the extension itself
• API keys are stored securely in the VS Code secret storage
• You can use local models via Ollama for complete privacy
• The extension implements rate limiting and caching to reduce API usage and costs

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request or open issues for bug reports and feature requests.

Contribution Guidelines

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Make your changes
4. Run the linter (npm run lint)
5. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
6. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
7. Open a Pull Request

Code Style

This project follows these coding conventions:

• Use TypeScript for all code
• Follow the ESLint configuration provided
• Use async/await for asynchronous operations
• Add appropriate JSDoc comments to public APIs
• Write unit tests for new functionality

Testing

Please ensure your contributions include tests. Run the existing test suite to make sure your changes don't break existing functionality:

npm run test

🙏 Acknowledgements

• Thanks to the VS Code team for their excellent extension API
• Thanks to the AI provider teams at OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic
• Thanks to all contributors and users for helping improve this extension

📢 Feedback and Support

We welcome feedback and suggestions! There are several ways to reach out:

• Bug Reports and Feature Requests: Open an issue on GitHub
• Questions and Discussions: Start a discussion in the GitHub repository
• Direct Contact: Reach out to the maintainer via email at tuncerbostancibasi@gmail.com

♻️ Changelog

See the CHANGELOG.md file for details about version updates and changes.