life-as-code Lens

Feature provenance, inline in your editor.

See which feature owns the file you're editing, check its status and completeness, navigate the full feature hierarchy, and create or annotate features — without ever leaving VS Code.

What it does

Always-on inline context

Code lens — appears above the first line of every file inside a feature folder. Shows the feature key, status icon, title, and completeness score at a glance.

Hover — hover anywhere in your code to see the full feature summary for the file's owning feature: status, problem, decisions, annotations, and lineage.

Status bar — a chip in the bottom bar shows which feature owns your current file. Click it to open the Feature Panel.

Diagnostics — squiggles on feature.json files with completeness warnings:

Active features missing analysis or implementation get ⚠️ warnings
Active features with no recorded decisions get ℹ️ hints
Any feature missing a problem statement gets an ❌ error

Feature Panel

Click any code lens or status bar chip to open the Feature Panel — a rich webview with:

Tab	Content
Overview	Problem statement, lineage block with clickable parent/child links
Analysis	Markdown-rendered analysis with inline edit
Decisions	All decisions with rationale, date, and alternatives
Implementation	Markdown-rendered implementation notes with inline edit
Limitations	Editable list of known limitations
Annotations	All annotations with type badges (warning, lesson, tech-debt…)

Inline editing — every section has a ✏ edit button. Click it, edit the text directly in the panel, and press Ctrl+Enter or Save to write back to feature.json on disk. No file switching needed.

Navigate lineage — parent and child feature keys in the Lineage block are clickable links (↗). Click any one to open its Feature Panel.

Export — the ⤓ Export button renders the full feature as Markdown and offers to save it next to feature.json.

Feature Tree View

A Features panel in the Explorer sidebar lists all feature.json files in your workspace, grouped by status:

Features
  ⊙ active  (4)
    ⊙ auth-otp
    ⊙ payment-v2
  ◌ draft  (2)
    ◌ dark-mode
  ❄ frozen  (1)
    ❄ legacy-api

Click any feature to open its panel. Right-click for context actions.

Commands (Ctrl+Shift+P → `lac:`)

Command	What it does
`lac: New Feature here…`	4-step wizard: key, title, status, problem. Creates `feature.json` and opens the panel.
`lac: New Child Feature…`	Creates a child feature in a new subfolder with lineage pre-wired. Updates parent's `children[]`.
`lac: Change Feature Status…`	QuickPick to flip status (draft / active / frozen / deprecated) for the nearest feature.
`lac: Search Features…`	Workspace-wide search across all features — filter by key, title, tags, or problem text.
`lac: Add Decision…`	2-step wizard (decision + rationale) that appends to `decisions[]` with today's date.
`lac: Export Feature as Markdown`	Renders the full feature as `.md` and offers to save it alongside `feature.json`.
`lac: Show Feature Panel`	Opens the panel for the feature owning your current file.

All commands are also available in the editor right-click menu and the Explorer context menu.

Requirements

Install the CLI first — it includes lac-lsp, the language server the extension uses:

npm install -g @majeanson/lac

Then initialise a workspace in your repo:

lac workspace init

LSP mode (richer features)

By default the extension runs in lightweight mode (local file walking). Enable LSP mode for full hover, workspace symbol search (Ctrl+T → type a feature key), and richer diagnostics from the language server:

// .vscode/settings.json
{
  "lacLens.lspMode": true
}

lac-lsp is already on your PATH after installing @majeanson/lac — no extra install needed. The extension auto-detects it and notifies you.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`lacLens.enableCodeLens`	`true`	Show code lens above files in feature folders
`lacLens.enableStatusBar`	`true`	Show active feature in the status bar
`lacLens.lspMode`	`false`	Use `lac-lsp` for richer hover + diagnostics
`lacLens.lspServerPath`	`"lac-lsp"`	Path to the `lac-lsp` binary
`lacLens.httpPort`	`7474`	Port the LSP HTTP API listens on

Links

MIT License

life-as-code Lens

majeanson

life-as-code Lens

What it does

Always-on inline context

Feature Panel

Feature Tree View

Commands (Ctrl+Shift+P → lac:)

Requirements

LSP mode (richer features)

Settings

Links

Commands (Ctrl+Shift+P → `lac:`)