Developer Power Tools

An offline data workbench for Visual Studio Code. Paste data or open an editor selection, build a recipe, and inspect the result as text, a JSON/YAML tree, a zoomable graph, or hex.

26 operations. Local processing. No telemetry or input persistence.

Get started

Install the VSIX from GitHub Releases using VS Code's Extensions: Install from VSIX… command. After Marketplace publication, the extension id is verisoftcz.developer-power-tools.

1. Run Developer Power Tools: Open from the Command Palette, or select editor text and choose Developer Power Tools: Open Selection from its context menu.
2. Paste input and add operations using the search box. Load example demonstrates Base64 → JSON.
3. Select Run or press Ctrl/Cmd+Enter. Choose Text, JSON tree, Graph or Hex to inspect output.
4. Copy the result or replace the original selection. Replacement checks the document version and supports editor Undo.

This is a VS Code extension. Windows may associate .vsix files with Visual Studio's installer; install through VS Code instead.

What it does

The graph supports Ctrl/Cmd + wheel zoom around the pointer, drag-to-pan, collapse, search, Fit and 100% controls, up to 1600% absolute zoom. Large graphs fall back to a bounded tree. Date output defaults to Europe/Prague, formatted as dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm:ss; ISO output and other zones are selectable.

See the operation guide for formats, parameters and JSON-field examples.

Recipes and shortcuts

Add, parameterize, disable, reorder or remove recipe steps. Save recipes to user storage or .vscode/powertools-recipes.json in a trusted workspace. Import/export portable schema-version-1 JSON recipes; example recipes are included. Recipes contain operation settings, not input data. CyberChef recipe compatibility is not promised.

Auto-run is opt-in for inputs up to 64 KiB. Unknown imported operations are preserved and must be disabled or replaced before execution.

Privacy and limits

Transformations run on your extension host with bundled code: no telemetry, remote processing or runtime downloads. Input/output are held in memory and are not automatically persisted. Clipboard, file exports and editor replacement are explicit user actions. Remote/WSL workspaces run on their workspace extension host.

CPU-bound operations use disposable workers with cancellation and deadlines. Default limits are 10 MiB input/intermediate output, 10 seconds per run and 300 graph nodes. Configure powertools.maxInputMB, powertools.timeoutMs and powertools.graphNodeLimit. Preview is capped at 256 KiB; copying text uses the full result. Binary output requires an explicit text conversion before replacing editor text. Trees, YAML expansion and decompression have additional bounds.

Workers are not an arbitrary-code sandbox, heap limits are not a total RSS limit, and processing is not streaming. See security design and verification status. Report vulnerabilities privately using SECURITY.md.

Develop

Use Node 24, npm and desktop VS Code 1.99+. Open this repository root in VS Code.

npm ci
npm run verify
npx playwright install chromium
npm run test:e2e
npm run test:integration
npm run package

Press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host. On headless Linux, use xvfb-run -a npm run test:integration. Set VSCODE_TEST_VERSION=1.99.0 for the minimum host, or VSCODE_EXECUTABLE for an installed executable. Use npm run format before submitting changes. See CONTRIBUTING.md, architecture and release instructions.

CI is configured for Windows, Linux and macOS, VS Code stable/minimum-host integration, Chromium UI tests and package checks. Local verification is documented separately; remote CI results become available after the first push. VS Code for Web and virtual workspaces are unsupported; remote/WSL, screen-reader and full high-contrast release checks remain documented limitations.

License

MIT. The bundled YAML parser is ISC-licensed; see third-party notices. CyberChef is not bundled. Contributions follow the code of conduct.