LineHeat

LineHeat visualizes live code activity across your team to prevent conflicts even before you commit.

It answers a simple question in real time:

"Is someone else working here right now?"

Unlike Git history, pull requests, or blame views, LineHeat focuses on what is happening now, not what already happened.

What LineHeat Shows

• Live activity intensity on individual parts of code
• Recent edits by teammates, cooling over time
• Passive awareness without requiring a shared editing session

LineHeat is not collaborative editing. It does not move your cursor, sync your view, or force pair programming.

Why Use LineHeat

Modern teams work in parallel, often unknowingly touching the same areas of code.

Current tools fall into two extremes:

• Git-based tools → historical, too late
• Live co-editing → intrusive, synchronous

LineHeat sits in between: asynchronous, ambient, low-friction. It provides awareness without coordination overhead.

Use cases:

• Avoiding overlapping work and accidental conflicts
• Reducing redundant effort during refactors

Configuration

1. Install the extension from the VS Code Marketplace
2. Configure the extension in VS Code settings:
   • lineheat.token (required) - shared team token (must match server LINEHEAT_TOKEN)
   • lineheat.displayName (required) - shown to teammates
   • lineheat.emoji (optional) - shown next to your name (default: 🙂)
   • lineheat.heatDecayHours (optional) - hours before heat fully decays (default: 72)
   • lineheat.logLevel (optional) - error|warn|info|debug (default: info)
   • lineheat.serverUrl (required) - use default host or your LineHeat server URL

When connected, the status bar shows the server retention (example: LineHeat: 7d).

Privacy

LineHeat is not a surveillance tool.

• No source code, keystrokes, or file contents are transmitted
• repoId, filePath, and functionId are sent/stored as SHA-256 hashes (64-char lowercase hex). Raw filenames/paths and symbol names do not leave your machine
• Hashes are unsalted + deterministic (stable across sessions) which means common paths/names may be guessable
• Non-anonymity note: userId + displayName + emoji are shared to teammates in the same file room (i.e. teammates who also have the same file open)
• Retention defaults to 7 days (configurable on server)

If you are not looking at a file, LineHeat shows you nothing about it.

Repository Filtering

You can limit LineHeat to specific repositories using glob patterns:

"lineheat.enabledRepositories": ["/home/user/work/*", "**/company-*"]

By default (empty array), LineHeat is enabled for all repositories. Use the command "LineHeat: Enable for this repository" to quickly add the current repository.

Troubleshooting

• Open the Output panel and select the LineHeat log channel
• Set lineheat.logLevel to debug for verbose protocol + room join/leave logs

Status

🚧 Early development / experimental

APIs, behavior, and UI are expected to change.

License

MIT