Gitective
Git blame, investigated.
Who touched this line, why, and what else changed with it. Nothing more.
Most blame tooling comes bundled with sidebars, graphs, accounts, and upsells. Gitective is the
blame part only, done carefully: the current line's author at the end of the line, a hover card that
answers the next three questions, and a real VS Code diff one click away. Under 100 KB, zero
runtime dependencies, no telemetry.
Thirty seconds
- Open any file in a git repository. The gray text after the current line is the blame.
- Hover it: author, dates, full message, the exact line change, and actions.
- Press alt+shift+b for the commit menu; click Changes for a real diff.
- Inside the diff, use the ← → buttons in the title to walk the file's history, one revision at a time.
What you get
Inline blame on the current line, tinted by age (today is amber, last year is gray). Edits you
haven't saved yet show as uncommitted immediately, never as someone else's commit.
Hover card: avatar, author linked to their GitHub profile, a shield when the commit is signed
(green if verified), relative and absolute dates, the full commit message, then one compact row of
actions. A second section shows the blamed line's own diff line, copyable on its own, and a
Changes a ↔ b link to the diff. "You" means the commit email matches this repo's user.email.
Commit menu, one grouped menu per commit: changes in this file, changes vs the working tree, all
changed files, inspect commit; open or copy the commit link on GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket; file and
line history; copy SHA or message; and four git actions that never rewrite history: create branch,
create tag, revert, checkout detached.
Real diffs, parent ↔ commit, in the normal VS Code diff editor. Both panes blame themselves, so
you can hover inside an old revision and keep going back. Snapshot tabs are named file @ sha and
keep syntax highlighting.
Inspect commit: a read-only text document with header, message, stat and patch, plus
"Open side-by-side" lenses on every file. Searchable, copyable, no webview.
Search and history: commit search as you type (message, @author, SHA), file history, and line
history: every commit that touched the line under the cursor.
Status bar: You, 1 month ago at the left edge of the right-hand items. Hover for the full card
with a colored files/insertions/deletions line; click for the commit menu.
Also: blame works inside VS Code's own Git diffs, git blame -w and .git-blame-ignore-revs are
one setting each, and Gitective offers once to switch off VS Code's built-in blame item so you don't
see two.
Keys
| Key |
Does |
When |
| alt+shift+b |
Commit menu for the current line |
editor focused |
| alt+shift+h |
Line history |
editor focused |
| alt+shift+, / . |
Older / newer revision |
a Gitective revision or diff tab is active |
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
gitective.inline.enabled |
true |
Inline blame for the current line |
gitective.inline.format |
${author}, ${ago} • ${message} |
Inline template |
gitective.inline.ageTint |
true |
Tint the annotation by commit age (gitective.inlineBlame.age1…age5 colors) |
gitective.hover.enabled |
true |
Blame hover card |
gitective.hover.trigger |
annotation |
Card over the inline annotation only, or line for any line |
gitective.hover.avatars |
true |
Author avatars (GitHub, Gravatar; cached; initials offline) |
gitective.hover.showChanges |
true |
The blamed line's own diff line in the hover |
gitective.statusBar.enabled |
true |
Status bar blame (click opens the commit menu) |
gitective.statusBar.format |
$(git-commit) ${author}, ${ago} |
Status bar template (codicons allowed) |
gitective.dateFormat |
medium |
Absolute date style for ${date}, ${agoOrDate}, hover |
gitective.message.maxLength |
60 |
Message truncation for inline and status bar |
gitective.blame.ignoreWhitespace |
false |
git blame -w: reformatting commits stop claiming lines |
gitective.blame.ignoreRevsFile |
true |
Honor .git-blame-ignore-revs at the repo root |
Template tokens: ${author} ${authorEmail} ${ago} ${agoOrDate} ${date} ${message} ${sha}.
${agoOrDate} is relative under 30 days and an absolute date after.
Commands
Gitective: Commit Menu for Current Line · Inspect Commit · Changes with Previous Revision · Changes
with Working Tree · Open File at Revision · File History · Line History · Search Commits · Open Commit
on Remote · Copy Commit Link · Copy Commit SHA · Copy Commit Message · Older / Newer Revision · Toggle
Inline Blame.
Compared with
|
Gitective |
GitLens |
VS Code built-in blame |
| Current-line blame, hover, real diffs |
yes |
yes |
status bar and hover only |
| Commit menu with safe git actions |
yes |
yes, plus reset and rebase |
no |
| Line history, file history, search |
QuickPicks |
sidebar views |
no |
| Sidebars, commit graph, worktrees, AI |
no, on purpose |
yes |
no |
| Account, telemetry, paid tier |
none |
yes |
none |
| Size |
under 100 KB |
tens of MB |
built in |
If you want the graph and the views, GitLens is excellent. If you want blame that stays out of the
way, this is the tool.
Privacy
No telemetry. Git runs locally. The only network use is author avatars: GitHub via the repo's
origin (reusing an existing VS Code GitHub session, never prompting), then Gravatar, cached locally
for a week, with initials drawn when nothing is cached. Set gitective.hover.avatars to false and
Gitective never touches the network.
Requirements
git on your PATH. Files larger than 5 MB are not blamed.- Untrusted and virtual workspaces are not supported (Gitective runs git in your workspace).
Contributing
bun install, then F5 for an Extension Development Host. Run bun run check && bun run lint && bun run test && bun run test:vsc before a PR. Details in CONTRIBUTING.md.
License
MIT
