Shiftspace

Worktree manager and code review tool for VS Code. Keep tabs on multiple branches, inspect changes, and catch problems before you open a PR.

Preview release — Shiftspace is under active development. Expect rough edges and frequent updates.

What it does

Shiftspace gives you two views:

Grove — a dashboard of all your git worktrees as cards. Each card shows the branch, file count, lines changed, check results (lint, typecheck, test, etc.), and code smell counts. One glance tells you which worktree needs your attention.

Inspection — click a card to drill in. A file list and tree view of every change in that branch. Pick a diff mode (working changes, vs main, vs any ref) and browse files with inline insight badges.

Key features

Worktree management — Rename worktrees, swap branches, switch your primary worktree. Access everything from the sidebar or the full-screen panel.

Worktree badges — Drop a .shiftspace-worktree.json at a worktree's root and Shiftspace renders a pill badge next to its name. Handy for marking a worktree as stale, in progress, in review, etc. — great for AI agents to tag the worktree they're working on so you know which ones are safe to delete. Add .shiftspace-worktree.json to your .gitignore so badges stay local to each checkout.

{
  "badge": {
    "label": "stale",
    "color": "warning"
  }
}

label is free-form text; color (optional) is one of neutral, info, success, warning, danger — each backed by a VSCode theme token so badges stay coherent across themes. Defaults to neutral.

Checks & pipelines — Define lint, typecheck, test, build, or any custom command in .shiftspace.json. Run them per worktree. Chain them into pipelines (e.g., fmt → lint → typecheck → test). Results show pass/fail badges on each card and go stale automatically when files change.

Code smell detection — Define regex patterns in .shiftspace.json to flag things linters won't catch: eslint-disable comments, LLM-generated separators, TODO counts, whatever matters to your team. Findings appear as badges on file nodes in Inspection mode.

MCP server — Built-in Model Context Protocol server so AI agents can query insights, check status, run checks, and list changed files programmatically.

Bundled themes — Ships with Shiftspace Dark and Shiftspace Light color themes.

Getting started

1. Install the extension
2. Press Shift+Space to open Shiftspace (or run Shiftspace: Open as Tab from the command palette)
3. Your worktrees appear automatically — click one to inspect it
4. Drop a .shiftspace.json in your repo root to configure checks and code smell rules:

{
  "actions": [
    { "id": "lint", "label": "Lint", "command": "npm run lint", "type": "check", "icon": "search" },
    { "id": "test", "label": "Test", "command": "npm test", "type": "check", "icon": "beaker" }
  ],
  "pipelines": [
    { "id": "verify", "label": "Verify", "steps": ["lint", "test"], "stopOnFailure": true }
  ],
  "smells": [
    {
      "id": "eslint-disable",
      "label": "ESLint Disable",
      "pattern": "eslint-disable",
      "threshold": 1,
      "fileTypes": [".ts", ".tsx"]
    }
  ]
}

Configuration

Privacy & telemetry

Shiftspace ships with optional, opt-in anonymous error reporting (via Sentry). It is off by default. On first activation you'll see a one-time prompt asking whether to enable it — pick "No thanks" and you'll never be asked again. No code content, file contents, or personally identifiable information is ever sent. You can toggle it any time via the shiftspace.telemetry.enabled setting, and VS Code's global telemetry.telemetryLevel always takes precedence.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85+
• Git

Links

• GitHub
• Report an issue
• License (MIT)