Dinah for VS Code

Dinah is a single-binary CLI that carries cards through a workbench: claim, move, release, block, unblock. This extension puts that workbench in the sidebar, so you can see which workbench the folder you have open resolves to, which cards stand where, and which dinah binary the editor is talking to.

What it gives you

The Dinah view lists the workbench's columns and the cards standing in each of them. Selecting a card opens it. The view's commands run the same verbs the CLI runs, so claiming a card here and claiming it from a terminal are the same act against the same files.

• Claim, Move, Release, Block and Unblock, on the selected card.
• View Served Instructions, which opens the instruction chain the workbench serves for where that card stands as a read-only Markdown tab, and keeps that tab current while it is open.
• Check and Copy Path, on the workbench itself.
• Refresh, for when you would rather not wait for the poll.

Dinah also offers every workbench this window has found to the editor's agent mode, as an MCP server the editor can start on your behalf. Your own agent session then reaches that workbench without you editing a configuration file. Nothing starts by itself: VS Code asks you to trust a server before it starts one for the first time, and nothing here writes to your settings or to an mcp.json file. If you would rather nothing were offered, set dinah.registerMcpServer to false.

The extension also runs Dinah's language server over the markdown files in your folder, so a workbench's twelve-hex identifiers read back as names. A card reference carries the card's title and the column it stands in, beside the identifier and not instead of it, and hovering one tells you the same thing at more length. Clicking through opens what the reference names. The labels are live. The server rereads the workbench rather than remembering what it last saw, so a card somebody moved a moment ago reads as moved. Turn the whole of it off with dinah.lsp.enabled.

Requirements

You need the dinah binary. The extension finds it on your PATH, or you can name it yourself with the dinah.path setting. dinah.workbench chooses a workbench when the folder resolves to more than one, dinah.pollIntervalSeconds sets how often the view re-reads, dinah.watchFiles turns file watching on and off, and dinah.registerMcpServer turns the MCP server offer on and off.

Four more settings belong to the language server. dinah.lsp.enabled turns it on and off, dinah.lsp.annotateProse draws the inline label in prose as well as in front matter, dinah.lsp.pollIntervalSeconds sets how often the server rereads the workbench, and dinah.lsp.trace.server writes the server's own wire into an output channel.

Install the CLI from the project's own instructions at https://github.com/paulmooreparks/dinah#install.

The version numbers here and the version numbers there

This extension's version number and the dinah CLI's version number are unrelated by design. They count different things on separate cadences, and neither one is computed from the other, so comparing them tells you nothing. Version 1.0.0 of this extension does not pair with version 1.0.0 of the CLI, and a CLI still numbered 0.x is not behind an extension numbered 1.x.

What does tell you whether an installed extension and an installed binary belong together is the profile revision, which is the profile field dinah --json version publishes. That field names the command and storage contract the binary speaks, and it moves when the contract moves rather than when either project cuts a release. The extension already checks it on every binary it considers, refusing one whose profile is older than the fields the extension reads, so a mismatch surfaces as a message about the profile rather than as a wrong answer.

Every version of this extension sits on one line, and the number by itself does not say whether an archive was published as a pre-release. The marketplace listing says so, because a pre-release is marked as one there. No archive this repository publishes carries that mark, so every published version installs as a release and asks nobody to opt in.