Claude Live Diff

Follow Claude Code's work while it happens instead of reviewing at the end:

• Explorer follow (default on): every file Claude edits is revealed and selected in the Explorer as it's touched — the moving selection is the "Claude is here" marker. The extension adds no Explorer decorations of its own; git's colors/badges (green for new, orange for modified) stay authoritative.
• Status bar activity: a spinner (editing greeter.py) while an edit is in flight, a brief ✻ edited … afterward.
• Native diffs: each edit opens a VS Code diff of the pre-edit snapshot vs the current file.
• Transport controls: each edit holds Claude for 3s by default while the diff is up, with a status-bar countdown — resume (⏎), freeze (space), or skip a burst (shift+⏎). Diffs stay open after release until newer ones push them past diff.maxOpenDiffs. Set hold.dwellMs: 0 for no holding.

There is deliberately no extra Explorer decoration or activity-bar view: the regular Explorer (selection + git badges) is the UI, plus the status bar and the diffs themselves.

Architecture: Claude Code PreToolUse/PostToolUse HTTP hooks POST to a localhost server inside this extension; the PostToolUse response is the hold point. See claude-hooks/README.md.

Install (once per machine — new projects need nothing)

1. Install Claude Live Diff from the VS Code Marketplace (Albinstman.claude-bridge).
2. Run Claude Live Diff: Install Claude Code Hooks from the command palette and pick User settings — this merges the hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json, so they apply to every project. (If you skip this, the extension notices the missing hooks and offers to install them.)
3. Start a Claude Code session and ask it to edit something.

That's the whole setup. The hooks fail open, so projects/machines without the extension running are completely unaffected. For devcontainers, add the extension ID to devcontainer.json so each container comes up ready:

"customizations": { "vscode": { "extensions": ["Albinstman.claude-bridge"] } }

Manual/offline install from source:

npm install && npm run build && npx vsce package
code --install-extension claude-bridge-*.vsix

The hooks JSON is documented in claude-hooks/README.md if you prefer to merge it by hand (project-level .claude/settings.json works too — just don't install both levels, or every edit fires twice).

Everyday controls

Settings (all under claudeBridge.)

Everything hot-reloads except port (which restarts the bridge server).

Behavior notes & limitations (v1)

• View-only. No accept/reject — rejecting edits stays Claude Code's job.
• No Explorer decorations or side views. By design the extension leaves file badges and colors to git; live activity shows as Explorer selection (follow) and the status bar spinner. Changes made via Bash are tracked internally (watcher) but have no UI beyond the status bar file count.
• New files: created files diff against an empty left side and are revealed after PostToolUse (they don't exist before it).
• MultiEdit = one snapshot pair, one diff, one hold.
• Parallel subagents: interleaved Pre/Post events are held per-request; a Pre without its Post for 60s is discarded.
• Files outside the workspace still get diffs and holds; Explorer reveal is skipped for them.
• .ipynb files are snapshotted as raw JSON; diffs are noisy, so they're in the default hold.exclude.
• Extension reload mid-hold: the pending hook request dies and Claude Code fails open — the session recovers by itself.
• Multiple windows: the second window's bridge lands on a probed port (+1…+10); v1 assumes a single session per window.
• Remote/devcontainer: the extension must run where the claude CLI runs (the workspace/remote side), which is the default for workspace extensions. If you sideload into a remote, code --install-extension from the remote's integrated terminal installs it in the right place.
• Security: the server binds 127.0.0.1 only and has no authentication — anything that can reach that port in the same environment can post events. Intended for sandboxed/devcontainer setups where the container is the security boundary. Request bodies (which contain file contents) are never logged.

Releasing (maintainers)

Marketplace uploads are manual by choice; package.json is the single source of truth for versions:

1. Bump version in package.json, commit, push to main.
2. .github/workflows/publish.yml sees the not-yet-released version and creates tag v<version> plus a GitHub release with the .vsix attached. Pushes that don't change the version just run the typecheck.
3. Download the .vsix from the release and upload it at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/manage/publishers/albinstman (… menu on the extension → Update) — keeping the marketplace version identical to package.json.