NVM Studio (Hex Editor fork)

An internal fork of Microsoft's vscode-hexeditor extended into a config-driven, vendor-agnostic, AI-assisted tool for analyzing AUTOSAR NVM (non-volatile memory) dumps — while keeping the original general-purpose hex editor intact.

Base hex editor features

• Opening files as hex (.bin, S-record .mot/.s19/…, Intel HEX, or any file)
• A data inspector for viewing hex values as various data types
• Editing with undo, redo, copy, and paste support
• Find and replace
• An experimental diff mode (Compare Selected in HexEditor)

How to open a file

1. Right click a file → Open With → Hex Editor
2. Command palette (F1) → Open File using Hex Editor
3. Command palette (F1) → Reopen With → Hex Editor

Associate file types with the hex editor by default via workbench.editorAssociations:

"workbench.editorAssociations": {
    "*.hex": "hexEditor.hexedit",
    "*.ini": "hexEditor.hexedit"
},

Configuring the Data Inspector

By default the data inspector shows to the right of the data grid, but hexeditor.inspectorType can switch it to a hover popup, or a dedicated activity-bar sidebar entry (combine with hexeditor.dataInspector.autoReveal to avoid revealing the sidebar automatically).

NVM Studio

The NVM Studio activity-bar container adds AUTOSAR NVM dump analysis on top of the hex editor. The core is deliberately vendor-blind and config-driven — it has zero built-in knowledge of any vendor's on-flash layout; everything comes from *.nvmlayout.json descriptors, declared source files (ARXML, Fee_Lcfg.c, …), and optional pluggable engines.

Highlights:

• Layout resolution — drop a *.nvmlayout.json next to a dump (or in conf/) to opt in to block/field rendering: static offsets, a declarative structured profile, or a full parsing engine (e.g. the bundled Vector MICROSAR FEE V3 link-table engine), with no vendor logic in the extension itself.
• Blocks Tree / Blocks Table — browse parsed blocks, filter, arrange by sector/write time/identity, and configure visible columns.
• Data Inspector byte explain — selection-driven per-byte coloring plus a breakdown of which block/field/value a byte belongs to.
• Custom Views — group blocks that share a decoded structure (or a name family) into ad-hoc comparison tables, from the Blocks Table, the Blocks tree, or the Data Inspector.
• Annotations — bookmarks, tags, and rich notes anchored to a block or byte range, stored as a portable sidecar file next to the dump or in workspace state (hexeditor.nvm.annotationStorage).
• Report export — combine parsed blocks with your bookmarks/tags/notes into a Markdown report, with a live preview panel.
• Ask NVM AI — a @nvm chat participant plus nine Language Model Tools (#nvmListBlocks, #nvmSearchBlocks, #nvmAnalyzeBlock, #nvmGetDecoded, #nvmReadBytes, #nvmListAnnotations, #nvmCreateNote, #nvmExportReport, #nvmRiskDetection) so Copilot (or any LM-tool-aware agent) can query the active dump.
• Engine management — install/manage external layout engines (NVM: Install Engine…, NVM: Manage Engines…), gated behind Workspace Trust, the hexeditor.nvm.allowExternalEngines setting, and a per-file confirmation.
• Automatic dependency discovery — point hexeditor.nvm.workspaceRoots at one or more folders and the extension recursively finds dependency files a descriptor declares (e.g. Fee_Lcfg.c, Dem_Lcfg.h, *.arxml); ambiguous duplicate names prompt you to choose, and the choice is remembered (hexeditor.nvm.fileChoices, reselect via NVM: Reselect Dependency File).

NVM settings