StandupBrief — VS Code Extension

Personal standup-brief dashboard, surfaced directly inside VS Code: PRs awaiting your review, PRs you authored, open incidents, and recent local commits — all in one place.

Part of the standup-brief monorepo. This package is the VS Code surface; core data fetching lives in standup-brief-core.

Features

Sidebar TreeView with grouped sections for pull requests, issues, and incidents
Full webview dashboard that adopts your current VS Code theme
Status bar item showing an urgent-count badge with one-click refresh
Auto-refresh on a configurable interval
GitHub + Microsoft sign-in via VS Code's built-in vscode.authentication providers
Copy current brief as Markdown for pasting into standups, issues, or notes

All views are rendered from a single BriefResult (see standup-brief-core/types) so the tree, webview, and status bar stay consistent.

Install

Install the packaged VSIX directly:

code --install-extension standup-brief.vsix

The shipped artifact lives at dist/standup-brief.vsix (~84 KB).

To build the VSIX from source:

pnpm -F standup-brief build
pnpm -F standup-brief package

Configuration

Twelve settings, organized into four groups under Settings → Extensions → StandupBrief.

General

Setting	Default	Description
`standupBrief.refreshIntervalMinutes`	`15`	How often (minutes) to auto-refresh the brief.
`standupBrief.staleAgeDays`	`7`	Age (days) after which a PR or review request is considered stale.
`standupBrief.recentCommitsHours`	`24`	Lookback window (hours) for the "recent activity" commit section.
`standupBrief.statusBar.enabled`	`true`	Show the status bar item summarising urgent items and pending reviews.
`standupBrief.watchedRepos`	`[]`	Repository names to flag for extra attention (highlighted and bumped in priority). Empty = none.

Azure DevOps

Setting	Default	Description
`standupBrief.ado.organization`	`""`	Azure DevOps organization name (required).
`standupBrief.ado.project`	`""`	Azure DevOps project name (required).
`standupBrief.ado.viewerEmail`	`""`	Your Azure DevOps account email; required for authored-PR queries.
`standupBrief.ado.viewerObjectId`	`""`	Your AAD object id; required for reviewer queries. Find via `az ad signed-in-user show --query id -o tsv`.
`standupBrief.ado.repoFilter`	`[]`	Optional allow-list of ADO repo names; empty = include all.

GitHub

Setting	Default	Description
`standupBrief.github.viewerLogin`	`""`	Your GitHub login (e.g. `octocat`).
`standupBrief.incidentRepos`	`[]`	GitHub repos scanned for open incidents. Entries are `{ owner, name }` objects.

Local Git

Setting	Default	Description
`standupBrief.gitRepos`	`[]`	Local repos for the "recent activity" section. Entries are `{ name, path, branch? }` (branch defaults to `main`).

Commands

All commands are available under the StandupBrief category in the command palette.

Command ID	Palette Title	Description
`standupBrief.open`	StandupBrief: Open Dashboard	Open the full webview dashboard.
`standupBrief.refresh`	StandupBrief: Refresh	Force a fresh fetch of the brief.
`standupBrief.openPR`	StandupBrief: Open PR	Open a PR in the browser (invoked from TreeView items).
`standupBrief.copyMarkdown`	StandupBrief: Copy Brief as Markdown	Copy the current brief to the clipboard as Markdown.
`standupBrief.signIn`	StandupBrief: Sign In	Trigger GitHub + Microsoft sign-in via VS Code auth.
`standupBrief.setAdoPat`	StandupBrief: Set ADO PAT	Store an Azure DevOps PAT in SecretStorage (fallback auth).
`standupBrief.setGithubPat`	StandupBrief: Set GitHub PAT	Store a GitHub PAT in SecretStorage (fallback auth).
`standupBrief.diagnoseAuth`	StandupBrief: Diagnose Auth	Diagnose GitHub and ADO authentication status.
`standupBrief.showLogs`	StandupBrief: Show Logs	Reveal the extension output channel.
`standupBrief.openSettings`	StandupBrief: Open Settings	Jump to the extension's settings page.

Authentication

The extension uses VS Code's built-in vscode.authentication providers for both GitHub and Microsoft (AAD) sign-in — no PAT needed for the primary path. Tokens are issued and refreshed by VS Code; the extension never stores them itself.

If sign-in is unavailable, run StandupBrief: Set GitHub PAT or StandupBrief: Set ADO PAT to store a fallback token in VS Code SecretStorage.

Note: ADO requests currently send the Microsoft session token as a Bearer token. Full PAT-based Basic auth inside AdoClient is on the roadmap.

Screenshots

Validation screenshots are regenerated on demand via the PowerShell capture script:

pnpm -F standup-brief build
pnpm -F standup-brief package
pwsh packages/vscode/scripts/capture-screenshots.ps1

Outputs (gitignored) land in packages/vscode/test-artifacts/screenshots/:

File	Contents
`vscode-sidebar-treeview.png`	Activity Bar + StandupBrief tree view
`vscode-webview-dashboard.png`	Full webview dashboard panel
`vscode-status-bar.png`	Cropped status-bar strip

The script launches an isolated VS Code instance (dedicated --user-data-dir and --extensions-dir under $env:TEMP) so it does not perturb your primary profile. It is idempotent: existing screenshots and isolated dirs are deleted at the start of each run.

Implementation note — test-electron vs PowerShell

An earlier design used @vscode/test-electron + Electron capturePage() to automate capture from inside an Extension Host (Option A in the design notes). VS Code 1.85 ships with Electron 25, where @electron/remote is deprecated and BrowserWindow is not reachable from the extension-host Node process without bespoke IPC — brittle enough that we standardised on the PowerShell wrapper (Option B) as the validation protocol. The internal command standupBrief._loadFixture (env-var gated by STANDUP_BRIEF_ALLOW_FIXTURES=1, otherwise a no-op) is retained so Option A can be wired up later without another round-trip.

Roadmap

ADO PAT (Basic auth) support in AdoClient for environments where AAD sign-in isn't viable
Marketplace publishing (currently sideload-only via VSIX)
Telemetry opt-in for usage and error reporting

Development

Source lives in packages/vscode/src/. The extension is bundled with esbuild (esbuild.config.mjs) into dist/extension.js.

To iterate locally:

Open the monorepo in VS Code.
Run pnpm -F standup-brief build (or pnpm -F standup-brief watch for incremental builds).
Press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host with the extension loaded.

Useful scripts:

pnpm -F standup-brief build       # one-shot esbuild bundle
pnpm -F standup-brief watch       # rebuild on change
pnpm -F standup-brief typecheck   # tsc --noEmit
pnpm -F standup-brief lint        # biome check src
pnpm -F standup-brief package     # produce dist/standup-brief.vsix

There is no runtime test suite yet — pnpm -F standup-brief test is a no-op and typecheck is the current gate. Unit tests for the webview and tree providers are tracked alongside the roadmap items above.

StandupBrief

focusquest