TodoAge
Shows how old each TODO/FIXME comment is - via git blame - and flags stale ones
directly in the editor.
The problem
Git blame extensions (GitLens and friends) show you who last touched a line and when, but
they don't specifically surface or flag comment age. TODO-listing extensions (Todo Tree and
friends) collect every TODO in your workspace into a list, but they don't show or flag how
old each one is. Nothing on the marketplace combines "this is a TODO" with "this TODO is N
days old, and that's stale" into one inline signal - so stale TODOs accumulate silently,
forgotten in files nobody revisits.
TodoAge fills that specific gap: an inline, per-line age annotation for TODO/FIXME
comments, using data your repo already has (git history), with zero setup.
How it works
On activation, and whenever you open or switch to a file, TodoAge scans every line of the
visible document for a configurable set of tags (default: TODO, FIXME).
For each match, it shells out to your locally installed git binary
(git blame --porcelain -L <line>,<line>) to find the commit that introduced that line,
and reads its author-time.
It renders a small inline annotation after the line, e.g. (TODO: 214 days old), in a
muted color normally, or a bold orange/warning color if the age exceeds your configured
todoAge.staleDays threshold (default 90 days).
Edits are debounced (~900ms after you stop typing) and only the changed document is
re-scanned - not the whole workspace.
Configuration (todoAge.staleDays, todoAge.tags) is read live from
vscode.workspace.getConfiguration, so changes apply immediately without reloading the
window.
Workspace Trust: because git blame honors a repo's own local .git/config, TodoAge
does nothing in an untrusted workspace and starts annotating as soon as you trust it. Every
git call also runs with global/system git config disabled (GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL /
GIT_CONFIG_SYSTEM pointed at the null device, GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM=1).
TodoAge makes zero network calls and collects zero telemetry. Everything runs
locally against your own git history via the git binary already on your machine.
Configuration
| Setting |
Type |
Default |
Description |
todoAge.staleDays |
number |
90 |
Number of days after which a TODO/FIXME comment is considered stale. |
todoAge.tags |
string[] |
["TODO", "FIXME"] |
Comment tags to track (case-insensitive). |
Honest caveats
- Tag matching is a bare word-boundary regex (
\bTODO\b, \bFIXME\b, case-insensitive),
not a per-language comment parser. This keeps the extension language-agnostic with no
per-language configuration, but it means a string literal that happens to contain the word
"TODO" will also get an age annotation. Accepted as a small, rare false-positive risk for v1.
- Only works in git-tracked files with committed history. If the workspace isn't a git
repository, or
git isn't installed, TodoAge simply shows no age annotations - it fails
silently rather than showing an error.
- Uncommitted lines show no age. If a TODO you just typed hasn't been committed yet (or
is part of an uncommitted change to an existing line),
git blame reports it as
unattributed and TodoAge intentionally skips showing an age for it - a TODO you wrote a
moment ago doesn't have a meaningful "age" yet.
License
MIT - the full license text is included with the extension.
| |
