Codicil for VS Code

See, review and control what your AI coding agents know about your project.

Your agent forgets the decision you explained yesterday, suggests the library you deliberately removed, and rebuilds the thing you already tried. Codicil fixes that by keeping project knowledge — rules, decisions, architecture, conventions — as Markdown in .codicil/, committed alongside your code.

This extension is your window onto it: read it, review what agents suggest, and see exactly what an agent is told for the file you're editing.

Codicil sidebar in VS Code

Features

Knowledge

Everything the project knows, grouped by type, status or scope. Open an item to read the full Markdown record — then edit, verify or archive it. A live summary shows how much is in play, stale, or waiting on you.

Proposals

Agents stage what they judge worth remembering. Review each proposal as a diff and accept or reject it. Nothing reaches the knowledge base without your say-so.

You propose, they suggest — you decide. There is deliberately no way for an agent to accept its own proposals.

Context

The exact package an agent would receive for the file you're editing — in the order it would see it, including what was dropped for the budget and why.

Verify & Doctor

Knowledge items can carry checks (a file that must exist, a pattern that must not appear). Re-run them against your code per item or all at once. Doctor scans for merge conflicts, broken files and dangling references.

Getting started

Install the extension and open a project.
Open the Codicil view in the Activity Bar and click Initialize Codicil. This creates the .codicil/ folder.
Capture your first note: select code or text, right-click, and choose Codicil: Remember the selected text — or run Codicil: Remember this from the Command Palette.
Connect your agent so it can read and propose knowledge over MCP. Use the built-in setup commands for your client:
- Codicil: Configure MCP for Copilot
- Codicil: Configure MCP for Cursor
- Codicil: Configure MCP for Claude Code

The Guide view walks through the full workflow, available actions and check syntax at any time.

Tip: When you capture a note, Codicil infers its type and scope from the sentence and shows you the guess before saving — so you can correct it in one click.

Commands

Command	What it does
`Codicil: Set up the knowledge layer`	Create `.codicil/` in this project
`Codicil: Remember this`	Capture knowledge; type and scope inferred for you
`Codicil: Remember the selected text`	Capture the current editor selection
`Codicil: What does the agent know here?`	Show context for the open file
`Codicil: Verify against the code`	Re-check a single item
`Codicil: Verify everything`	Re-check the whole knowledge layer
`Codicil: Check the knowledge layer for problems`	Run Doctor
`Codicil: Configure MCP for Copilot / Cursor / Claude Code`	Wire up your agent
`Codicil: Add agent instructions`	Add Codicil guidance to your agent files
`Codicil: Open Guide`	Open the in-editor guide

Settings

Setting	Description
`codicil.groupBy`	Group the Knowledge tree by `type`, `status` or `scope`
`codicil.statusBar.enabled`	Toggle the status bar item showing how many items apply to the current file

Requirements

VS Code 1.95.0 or later.
A trusted, non-virtual workspace — Codicil reads and writes .codicil/ and runs verification checks directly against your files.

Learn more

Codicil is an open, developer-controlled knowledge layer that also ships a CLI and a standalone MCP server. See the project README for the full story, and the Changelog for what's new.

License

MIT

Codicil

Pranit