Hermione VSCode Extension

Reports which file a student has active to the Hermione backend, so a teacher can see live what each student is working on (for timely intervention) and so time-on-task per file and per exercise can be analyzed offline.

It is passive and transparent: it never changes the student's editor. It sends a small JSON event when the active file changes, a periodic heartbeat while a file stays focused (paused when the window is unfocused), an edit event summarizing each burst of typing, and a close event when a file is closed.

Edits are reported as a count of changes, never their content — enough to tell a student who is writing code from one who is stuck on the same screen, without shipping their work off the machine.

What it sends

POST {serverUrl}/api/file-events with a batch of:

{
  "student": "alice",
  "workspace": "course",
  "path": "/home/alice/course/ex1/main.py",
  "relativePath": "ex1/main.py",
  "language": "python",
  "exercise": "ex1",          // resolved from .hermione.json, if any
  "kind": "focus",            // "focus" | "heartbeat" | "edit" | "close"
  "edits": 12,                // "edit" only: changes coalesced into this event
  "line": 42,                 // 1-based cursor line, when the file is on screen
  "atUnixMs": 1718200000000
}

Events are queued and retried, so a brief backend outage neither loses data nor disrupts the editor.

It also opens a WebSocket (/ws) to receive teacher broadcasts for the course in real time, shown as notifications. On (re)connect it replays anything missed via a since cursor, so messages aren't lost across disconnects.

Settings

Commands: Hermione: Start / Stop Reporting, Hermione: Set Student Identifier.

Course config & identity (.hermione.json)

The committed .hermione.json is the single course config — it carries the backend, enrollment token, identity source, and the file→exercise mapping. The student identity is derived from the container environment (no login); the identity field picks the source (github / git-email / env / os, or auto). See examples/course-template for the trust model.

{
  "backend": "https://hermione.example.edu:50051",
  "token": "<course enrollment token>",
  "identity": "github",
  "exercises": [
    { "name": "ex1", "match": "ex1/**" },
    { "name": "ex2", "match": ["ex2/**", "solutions/ex2/*"] }
  ]
}

Files that match no rule simply have no exercise.

Develop

npm install
npm run compile      # type-check (tsc --noEmit)
npm run bundle       # build out/extension.js (esbuild, inlines `ws`)
npm run package      # produce hermione-vscode.vsix

Then press F5 in VSCode to launch an Extension Development Host. Make sure the backend is running (cargo run -p hermione-server) and open http://localhost:8080 to watch activity appear on the board.