Build Detective
🚀 Overview
A VS Code and Cursor extension that tells you why your build broke, without leaving your editor. It tracks CI results for the branch you're on and hands failed jobs to an AI assistant for explanation.
Integrations: The first supported CI/CD system is Buildkite.
Analysis is delegated to whichever AI assistant you already have — Copilot or Cursor via the editor's Language Model API, or Claude via the Claude Code extension or the claude CLI. If none is available, the prompt is copied to your clipboard.
✨ Features
- Buildkite build status — automatically fetches builds for the currently checked-out branch
- Auto-refresh — polls Buildkite every 20 seconds and updates on branch changes
- AI failure analysis — click Analyze on any failed job to get an AI-powered explanation via Copilot, Cursor, or Claude
- Direct links — open builds directly in the Buildkite web UI from the sidebar
📦 Installing
Prerequisites:
- The Buildkite CLI (
bk) — the extension will offer to install it for you and walk you through bk auth login on first use
- AI analysis requires at least one assistant: GitHub Copilot, Cursor's built-in AI, the Claude Code extension, or the
claude CLI on your PATH
VS Code
Install Build Detective for Buildkite from the VS Code Marketplace, or run:
code --install-extension joesustaric.build-detective
Cursor
Install Build Detective for Buildkite from Open VSX (Cursor's default extensions source), or run:
cursor --install-extension joesustaric.build-detective
From a .vsix (offline, or a specific version)
Download the .vsix from the latest GitHub Release, then:
code --install-extension build-detective-X.Y.Z.vsix
# or
cursor --install-extension build-detective-X.Y.Z.vsix
Once installed, open a repository. The Build Detective icon appears in the Activity Bar.
🔒 Your data
- The extension never stores or handles a Buildkite credential. All Buildkite access goes through the
bk CLI, which authenticates via OAuth into your OS keyring — see ADR 0002.
- Build and job logs are scanned and redacted for API tokens before they're used anywhere, including in prompts sent to an assistant.
- There is no Build Detective backend. Log excerpts are sent only to the AI assistant you already have installed and configured — Copilot, Cursor, or Claude — and nowhere else.
- The extension collects no telemetry or analytics.
