Cartara for VS Code

Turn your AI coding sessions into explanations, quizzes, and a personal engineering knowledge map — grounded in your repository's actual diffs.

Cartara watches the work you and your coding agents actually do, then explains what changed and why, and checks your understanding. This extension is the in-editor surface: sign in, pair this machine, connect your agents, and trigger reviews without leaving VS Code. Reviews, quizzes, and the knowledge map are read on the dashboard.

Getting started

Cartara: Sign In — opens your browser and hands the session back to VS Code automatically. On a remote/SSH/Codespaces machine, use Cartara: Sign In with a Code instead.
Cartara: Pair This Device — links this machine to your workspace.
Cartara: Connect Claude Code / Cartara: Connect Codex — installs the hooks so your agent sessions are picked up automatically.
Cartara: Select Project — choose which project reviews attach to.
Cartara: Review Current Changes — analyze your uncommitted work.

Your first review appears on the dashboard, along with a short quiz that feeds your knowledge map.

Commands

Command	What it does
`Cartara: Sign In`	Browser sign-in with deep-link handoff
`Cartara: Sign In with a Code`	Device-code sign-in for remote/SSH/Codespaces
`Cartara: Sign Out`	Clears the stored session
`Cartara: Pair This Device`	Pairs this machine to your workspace
`Cartara: Connect Claude Code`	Installs the Claude Code hooks
`Cartara: Connect Codex`	Installs the Codex hooks
`Cartara: Collector Status`	Integration health and recent activity
`Cartara: Integration Doctor`	Verifies hooks are installed and working
`Cartara: Select Project`	Picks the project reviews attach to
`Cartara: Review Current Changes`	Analyzes uncommitted changes
`Cartara: Before Merge Check`	Analyzes staged changes before committing
`Cartara: Open Latest Review`	Opens the most recent session
`Cartara: Privacy Preview`	Shows what would be uploaded before sending

Settings

Setting	Default	What it's for
`cartara.apiBaseUrl`	`https://api.cartara.dev`	Cartara API. Point at `http://localhost:3001` for a local stack.
`cartara.webBaseUrl`	`https://cartara.dev`	Dashboard. Point at `http://localhost:3000` for a local stack.
`cartara.collectorCommand`	(empty)	Leave empty to use the collector bundled with this extension. Set to `cartara` (or a path) to drive your own.
`cartara.notifyOnReview`	`true`	Notify when a session review is ready.

The two base URLs must share a parent domain — the session cookie is scoped to .cartara.dev, so mixing the hosted dashboard with a different API host leaves authenticated requests failing.

The collector

Cartara does its git inspection, redaction, and uploads in a local collector, so nothing leaves your machine unfiltered. The collector ships inside this extension — there's nothing separate to install, and no repository to clone. Node 20+ on your PATH is its only requirement.

Commands that upload data open a terminal with the collector command pre-typed but not executed, so you always see the upload preview and confirm it yourself.

If you already have your own cartara CLI, set cartara.collectorCommand to cartara and the extension will drive that instead.

Privacy

Redaction happens on your machine, before anything is uploaded. Files like .env, secrets/, and .ssh/ are never read, and detected secrets are stripped in every privacy mode. Use Cartara: Privacy Preview to see exactly what an upload would contain before you send it, and pick the mode (metadata / sanitized / full) that suits you on the dashboard under Settings → Privacy.

Status

Beta. This extension isn't on the VS Code Marketplace yet — it's installed from a .vsix downloaded from your Cartara dashboard.