Work Tracker

Automatic daily coding time tracker for VS Code — with a beautiful web dashboard, goals, and streaks.

A privacy-respecting WakaTime alternative built on Appwrite. Tracks your coding time automatically, breaks it down by project, language, and day, and shows it all in a modern web dashboard with goals and streaks.

✨ Features

🕒 Automatic, frictionless tracking

• Heartbeats captured on every file activity (open, edit, save, switch)
• Zero config — works the moment you install and sign in
• Offline-first: heartbeats queue locally and sync when you reconnect
• Lightweight: 5-minute flush interval respects Appwrite's free-tier rate limits

📊 Insightful web dashboard

• Focus Score and Productivity Score rings
• 7-day week strip, daily trend chart, hourly timeline
• Heatmap by day-of-week × hour-of-day
• Per-project, per-language, and per-file breakdowns
• Lines added/removed metrics
• Auto-generated insights ("🐦 Early bird", "💥 Biggest change", "🔀 Context switching", "🧹 Refactor mode", etc.)

🎯 Goals & streaks

• Daily and weekly time goals (e.g. "Code 2 hours every day")
• Per-language and per-project goal filters
• Live progress ring with color-coded status (red → amber → green)
• 🎉 celebration when a goal is hit
• Streak tracking across the dashboard

🔐 Privacy-first

• No code ever leaves your machine — only file paths, project names, languages, line counts, and timestamps
• Regex excludePatterns to skip sensitive folders
• Global trackingEnabled: false kill switch
• Self-hostable: bring your own Appwrite project, your data stays with you

⚙️ Developer-friendly

• TypeScript + esbuild (no webpack, no bloat)
• Tiny extension bundle (~180KB)
• 9 commands accessible from the Command Palette
• Configurable via standard VS Code settings

🚀 Quick start

1. Install the extension

Install from the VS Code Marketplace, or via CLI:

code --install-extension harendra21.work-tracker

2. Create a free account

Open the web dashboard, sign up with email + password.

3. Generate an API key

In the dashboard, go to Settings → API Keys and click Generate Key. Give it a name (e.g. "My Laptop").

4. Connect VS Code

In VS Code, run Work Tracker: Setup API Key from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), paste your key, and click Reload Now.

5. Start coding

Open any file. The status bar will show today's coding time. Visit the dashboard anytime to see your stats.

📸 Dashboard preview

The web dashboard lives at work-tracker.appwrite.network and includes:

• Hero header with personalized greeting and live period total
• Focus Score ring (longest uninterrupted session)
• Productivity Score ring (consistency + focus + volume)
• Insights auto-generated from your data
• Donut charts for projects and languages (click to filter Reports)
• Trend chart (click a day to jump into Reports)
• Activity heatmap (click any cell to filter)
• File leaderboard with project-name/filename.ext format

The Reports page offers detailed per-day breakdowns, top projects with medals 🥇🥈🥉, editing pattern stats (longest session, peak hour, write ratio, active days), and 5 advanced insights.

The Goals page shows live progress rings for each goal with live ticking every minute.

⚙️ Configuration

All settings live under the workTracker.* namespace. Open Settings (Ctrl+,) and search for "Work Tracker".

Example: settings.json

{
  "workTracker.apiKey": "wt_eyJpZCI6Li4uX2FiY2RlZg_AbCdEf1234567890",
  "workTracker.heartbeatIntervalSeconds": 180,
  "workTracker.excludePatterns": [".*\\.log$", "node_modules", "\\.git/"],
  "workTracker.statusBarEnabled": true
}

📋 Commands

Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and type "Work Tracker":

🛡️ Privacy

• No code is uploaded. Only file paths, project names, languages, line counts, and timestamps are sent to your Appwrite backend.
• Use excludePatterns to skip folders like node_modules, dist, .env, etc.
• Use the global trackingEnabled: false to disable all tracking instantly.
• Delete your account from the Appwrite console to remove all data permanently.
• Self-hostable: bring your own Appwrite project to keep data on your own infrastructure.

🏗️ Architecture

┌─────────────────┐     heartbeats     ┌──────────────┐
│   VS Code       │ ─────────────────▶ │   Appwrite   │
│   Extension     │     (every 5min)   │   Cloud      │
│  (TypeScript)   │                    │   (TablesDB) │
└────────┬────────┘                    └──────┬───────┘
         │                                    │
         │ offline queue                      │ tables
         │  (JSON file)                       ▼
         │                            ┌──────────────┐
         │                            │   React      │
         │   web dashboard ◀──────── │   Dashboard  │
         │  (read-only)               │   (Vite SPA) │
         └────────────────────────────└──────────────┘

• Extension (src/) — TypeScript, esbuild, Appwrite Node SDK, local JSON offline queue
• Web dashboard (web/) — React 19, Vite 6, Tailwind 3, Recharts, Appwrite Web SDK, deployed on Appwrite Sites

🧰 Development

npm install              # install extension deps
npm run watch            # build on save (extension)
# Press F5 in VS Code to launch the Extension Development Host
npm run test             # run unit tests (vitest)
npm run package          # build a .vsix

Web dashboard (separate)

cd web
npm install
npm run dev              # vite dev server with HMR
npm run build            # production build

Appwrite backend setup

The extension expects an Appwrite project with the following tables (see appwrite/setup.ps1 for the full idempotent script):

• heartbeats — one row per coding session
• projects — per-project metadata (color, isHidden, trackingEnabled)
• goals — daily/weekly time targets
• api_keys — generated keys for extension auth

All tables need permissions: create("any"), read("any"), update("any"), delete("any").

🤝 Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome at github.com/harendra21/work-tracker.

📄 License

MIT

npm run package && npx vsce publish