Deep Trace Navigation - Visual Studio Marketplace

Replay deep-trace Markdown tables as native VS Code editor navigation steps.

Features

Load trace from clipboard — Paste a deep-trace Markdown table and instantly navigate through execution steps.
Step-by-step navigation — Move forward and backward through trace entries with Next / Previous commands.
Inline step annotation — The current step's description is shown right above its line, with prev / next actions.
Tab navigation — While the cursor is on the current step line, Tab / Shift+Tab moves to the next / previous step.
Go to Definition — Jump directly to the source location of the current trace step.
Trace Breakpoints — Set or clear debugger breakpoints for every trace target line.
Bundled deep-trace agent skill — Ask the chat agent to /deep-trace a PR or file and it produces a trace table you can load straight into this extension.
Activity bar panel — Dedicated sidebar view showing the full trace as a tree.

Usage

Copy a deep-trace Markdown table to your clipboard.
Open the Deep Trace panel in the activity bar.
Click Load Trace from Clipboard (or run the command from the palette).
Use Next Step / Previous Step to walk through the execution path.

Bundled agent skill

This extension contributes the deep-trace skill through the chatSkills contribution point, so it is available in VS Code chat (agent mode) without a separate install.

In chat, run /deep-trace <pr-number-or-file-path>.
The skill outputs a trace plus an extension-ready table and, when possible, copies that table to the clipboard.
Run Deep Trace: Load Trace from Clipboard to step through it.

The skill files live in skills/deep-trace/ and are copied from laststance/skills (commit 9c14dc1), with the helper script path in Step 6.5 adjusted to resolve relative to the bundled SKILL.md.

Supported trace format

Deep Trace Navigation reads Markdown tables from your clipboard. At minimum, the table needs a file/path column and a line column.

| file                      | line | column | reason                          |
| ------------------------- | ---- | ------ | ------------------------------- |
| src/extension.ts          | 322  | 1      | VS Code activates the extension |
| src/parser/traceParser.ts | 23   | 1      | The clipboard table is parsed   |

Accepted header aliases include:

file or path
line
column, col, or character
reason, why, summary, or title

Commands

Command	Description
`Deep Trace: Load Trace from Clipboard`	Parse and load a trace table from the clipboard
`Deep Trace: Next Step`	Navigate to the next trace step
`Deep Trace: Previous Step`	Navigate to the previous trace step
`Deep Trace: Reveal Current Step`	Reveal the current step in the editor
`Deep Trace: Go to Definition from Current Step`	Jump to the definition of the current step
`Deep Trace: Set Trace Breakpoints`	Add debugger breakpoints to each unique trace line
`Deep Trace: Clear Trace Breakpoints`	Remove breakpoints previously added by Deep Trace

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`deepTrace.tabNavigation`	`true`	Use `Tab` / `Shift+Tab` to move between steps while the cursor is on the current step line. Elsewhere `Tab` indents as usual.

The inline annotation is rendered as a CodeLens, so it requires editor.codeLens to be enabled.

Its color and size follow your color theme's CodeLens style. If the annotation is hard to read, override it in your settings.json (this also affects other CodeLenses such as reference counts):

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
  "editorCodeLens.foreground": "#e5c07b"
},
"editor.codeLensFontSize": 13

Requirements

VS Code 1.100.0 or later (including forks such as Cursor)

Privacy

Deep Trace Navigation does not send trace data anywhere. Clipboard contents are parsed locally inside VS Code, and the active trace session is stored only in VS Code workspace state so it can be restored in the same workspace.

Contribute and release

Start with CONTRIBUTING.md, TESTING.md and ARCHITECTURE.md.

pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm check

Use the Node.js version in .node-version and the pnpm version pinned in package.json. pnpm check runs formatting, documentation links, lint, types, tests with coverage, Fallow, and VSIX packaging. docs/releasing.md covers publishing to the VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX. Tracked follow-ups live in TODOS.md.

Workflows are separated into Test, Build, TypeCheck, Lint, Format, Fallow, Security, Socket and OpenSSF Scorecard. Test runs on Linux, Windows and macOS; Codecov receives the Linux coverage report. Security includes CodeQL, dependency review and a production dependency audit.

Socket scans same-repository PRs, pushes to main, its weekly schedule and manual runs, using the SOCKET_SECURITY_API_TOKEN Actions secret. Fork PRs skip that secret-dependent workflow. See Socket token setup for maintainer configuration.

This is an independent Laststance project. Report vulnerabilities through SECURITY.md and follow the Code of Conduct.

License

MIT.