Second Look

Review what your coding agent changed, one change at a time: accept it, reject it, edit it, or leave a comment the agent reads and answers. Second Look keeps its own checklist, so you don't stage, commit or pick branches for any of this, and the next review shows only what changed since the last one.

Getting started

1. Install Second Look from the Extensions view, or run code --install-extension dnkats.second-look.
2. Open the repository your agent worked in, click the Second Look icon in the activity bar and press Start Review. Until then Second Look shows nothing and writes nothing in that repository.
3. Go through the changes: Alt+F5 jumps to the next one (on into the next file), Alt+Y accepts it, Alt+N rejects it and puts back the text you had accepted. The same actions are links above each change and buttons in the list. Edit freely; your own edits are changes to accept like any other. Undo takes back accepts and rejects.
4. When the list is empty, Finish Review. It can commit what is still uncommitted, and the next review starts from here.

On a side branch the review covers everything since the branch left main; on main, the commits not pushed yet (without an upstream, what changes after you start); after a finished review, what came since; uncommitted changes always. Review From… in the view's ... menu starts from any commit instead.

Accept and reject buttons in the diff gutter

Optional: Second Look can put Accept Block and Reject Block next to VS Code's Revert Block in the diff. They use a VS Code API still in preview, which VS Code allows only for extensions you name. Run Preferences: Configure Runtime Arguments, add

"enable-proposed-api": ["dnkats.second-look"]

inside the braces of the file that opens (with a comma after the entry before it), then quit VS Code and start it again. With Remote-SSH, WSL or a dev container this is the file on your own computer. Without it, the diffs show Accept and Reject links instead.

Comments for the agent

Click + next to a line number, or select lines first, to leave a comment (if VS Code offers a choice, pick Add comment for the agent (Second Look)). When you ask your agent to "check my comments", it reads them with the code they were written on, does what they say and answers in the thread. It also learns which of its changes you rejected.

The agent learns this from a skill: run Second Look: Install Agent Skill… once. It works with Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot and other agents that read Agent Skills; VS Code's own chat gets it automatically. For other agents, Copy Open Comments as Prompt puts the comments on the clipboard.

Good to know

• Everything stays in the repository's .git; Second Look sends nothing over the network and never touches git's own index.
• It works locally and over Remote-SSH, WSL and dev containers, where it runs on the remote side. It needs VS Code 1.90 or newer and git.
• Pause Review in the view's ... menu hides the review in a window without losing it.
• In files with many changes, "diffEditor.diffAlgorithm": "legacy" makes VS Code redraw the diff after each accept several times faster.

The guide has the details: every command, what a review covers on rebases and pulls, where the state lives, the limitations, the settings and how to build and release.

Contributors

• Daniel Kats: author
• Yifan Cheng: repositories in subfolders and the Repositories view (0.2.2)

Pull requests are welcome at dnkats/second-look.