VarAlign

Also on the VS Code Marketplace.

Catch the duplicate, drifted, and misaligned variables AI coding agents scatter across sessions — right in your editor. 100% local: your code never leaves your machine.

AI assistants forget. Across sessions they re-introduce a variable that already exists under another name, let a value drift from the one they wrote last week, or strand a definition when a file moves. VarAlign tracks every assignment your assistant writes, scores the duplicates and drift, and hands you a ready-to-paste fix prompt.

Native tree views — Duplicates · Variables · Sessions — over the VarAlign engine. Detection, scoring, and persistence run in a zero-dependency Python engine that ships inside the extension; the views are a thin, read-through client. Everything runs on your machine — no cloud, no telemetry, no code upload — so it works in locked-down and air-gapped environments.

Features

• Duplicates — High / Medium / Low groups. Expand a pair to see both sides; right-click to Dismiss (not a duplicate), Confirm, or Dismiss with note. Verdicts persist, and dismissing one member auto-quiets the whole family so you review each pattern once.
• Variables — every tracked assignment, grouped by file and coloured by its worst duplicate level; click to jump to the definition.
• Sessions — what each AI session introduced or changed.
• Status bar — VarAlign: N high; click to focus the Duplicates view.
• Generate Fix Prompt — a repo-scoped remediation prompt in a new tab, ready to paste back to your assistant.
• Fix with AI — hands a targeted consolidation prompt to Claude Code or Kilo Code, whichever you have open.
• Auto-refreshes when the store changes (a hook or the CLI wrote to it).

Getting started

1. Install VarAlign.
2. Make sure Python 3.11+ is on your PATH — the extension bundles the engine, so there's nothing else to install or point at.
3. Open a repo and click the VarAlign chip in the activity bar. VarAlign scans the workspace and starts tracking.

That's it — you're running locally, and every byte stays on your machine.

VarAlign keeps its tracking data in a .varmem/ folder at your repo root. The extension adds .varmem/ to your .gitignore automatically (git repos only). If it can't, add this line yourself:

.varmem/

VarAlign Pro

Pro unlocks Merge Variables: right-click a duplicate pair and VarAlign picks the canonical name, rewrites the references, and removes the duplicate definition — in your editor, on your machine.

Licenses are verified offline (an Ed25519-signed key, checked locally with a 14-day grace period past expiry — nothing is ever sent anywhere, so Pro works air-gapped too). Activate with VarAlign: Enter License; check anytime with VarAlign: License Status.

Settings

Optional: read from a self-hosted API

Teams that run the engine centrally (python varmem.py serve on their own infrastructure) can point the views at it by setting varalign.apiUrl, varalign.apiToken, and varalign.apiProject. The views then read /v1/projects/{id}/report; review verdicts stay read-only over the API. Leave apiUrl empty (the default) for the fully local experience.

Development

cd extension
npm install
npm run compile   # press F5 for an Extension Development Host

Build a .vsix (minified bundle + engine via vscode:prepublish):

npx @vscode/vsce package

License

The VarAlign VS Code extension is source-available under the Business Source License 1.1 (see the LICENSE file): free to use and modify, no reselling or competing hosted/embedded offering, converting to Apache-2.0 on 2030-07-15. The underlying VarAlign engine is licensed separately under Apache-2.0.