VS Code extension

The Repowise extension brings the local index into your editor and registers the Repowise MCP server with VS Code, so the same index serves both you and your AI coding agent. It is a thin client over the local repowise CLI and server: everything is computed on your machine and nothing about your code leaves it through the extension.

Install

pip install repowise
# or
uv tool install repowise

Know before you push

Analyze Change Risk (Source Control title bar, or the command palette) scores your uncommitted work against its base branch and opens a panel with the whole story of the change:

• A summary strip: how many files are affected downstream, how many usual companion files you haven't touched, and how many changed files have no associated test. Each chip jumps to its section.
• Riskiest files in this change — your changed files ranked by how risky history and structure say they are, so you review in the right order. Files that change unusually often are marked as hotspots.
• Downstream of your changes — the files that depend on what you edited.
• Usually changes together — companion files your history says belong to this change but are untouched. Advisory, not a rule.
• Changed without a test, and suggested reviewers with one-click copy for the PR description.

While you edit, a quiet co-change hint can appear in the status bar when the files you're touching have a strong history of changing together with a file you haven't opened. Dismissible per change set, never a popup, and tunable or off in settings (repowise.changeIntel.*).

What it surfaces

Editor-native signals

• Gutter heat: a severity-tiered strip next to lines with findings in the visible editor.
• File health in the status bar: defect, maintainability, and performance scores for the active file. See Code health.
• File explorer badges on the worst-health files (threshold configurable).
• Refactoring CodeLens above symbols with a detected plan, including Copy plan for agent — the same payload the web Refactoring tab produces.
• Hovers: line 1 of a file shows its health scores, primary owner, and governing decisions. Hovering a symbol shows what kind of symbol it is, how many callers and callees it has, who owns the file, and the decisions that govern it — fetched only when you hover, then cached.
• Diagnostics (off by default): opt in to publish high-severity findings to the Problems panel (repowise.diagnostics.enabled). The quieter surfaces above carry the full detail either way.

Tree views

A single Repowise activity-bar container with a Home overview, a Findings tree (health, hotspots, ownership, dead code), and a Refactoring tree. All lazy: data is fetched on first expand and refreshed only when the index moves.

Dashboards

Editor-tab webviews rendered from the same shared visualization library the web app uses (no duplicated components): health overview, architecture map, knowledge graph (with node search, path finder, and community detail), refactoring plans, decision timeline, and a docs browser.

MCP for your AI agent

One install registers the Repowise MCP server with VS Code, so agent-mode assistants query the index through the nine task-shaped tools instead of guessing from open files. For editors that read a config file, run Repowise: Configure MCP for this Workspace to write .vscode/mcp.json.

Settings

Privacy

The extension talks only to the local Repowise CLI and server on your machine and reads the index under .repowise/. It sends no telemetry of its own. The CLI's own telemetry opt-out is respected because the extension itself sends nothing.

Learn more

• Quickstart — install the CLI and build your first index.
• The nine MCP tools — what your agent can ask for.
• Connecting your IDE — the hosted MCP endpoint for other editors.