CtxEng AI

Production-ready VS Code sidebar for building high-quality ctxeng context and asking AI providers with secure key storage, live streaming output, and actionable code workflows.

Screenshots

Installation

1. Install the Python package:
   • pip install ctxeng
2. Install this extension (vscode-ctxeng) in VSCode.
3. Open a project folder.

Features

• CtxEng AI Sidebar
  • Dedicated "CtxEng AI" activity bar view with provider/model selection, query input, context preview, and AI response panels.
• Context Build + Explain
  • Build Context runs ctxeng build --fmt markdown.
  • Explain Current File scopes context to the active file.
• Live Loading States
  • Shows ⏳ Building context... and ⏳ Asking AI....
  • Disables actions while tasks are running and restores controls on success/error.
• Streaming AI Responses
  • Streams tokens/chunks in real time for providers with streaming APIs.
  • Gracefully falls back to non-streaming providers.
• Clickable File Navigation
  • Selected files in the sidebar open directly in editor and are revealed in Explorer.
• Diff View for AI Suggestions
  • Show Diff compares original selected code (or full file) with AI-generated suggestion using VS Code diff.
• Metrics Dashboard
  • Live Tokens / Estimated Cost / Files count from parsed ctxeng output.
• Secure API Keys
  • Keys are stored in VS Code SecretStorage (never in settings).
• Provider Support
  • OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral, Groq, Cohere, Together, DeepSeek, Ollama, xAI, OpenRouter.

Commands

• ctxeng.buildContext
• ctxeng.buildContextCurrentFile
• ctxeng.watchContext
• ctxeng.showSummary
• ctxeng.setApiKey
• ctxeng.clearApiKey
• ctxeng.listConfiguredProviders

Configuration

• ctxeng.aiProvider (default: openai)
• ctxeng.aiModel (default: gpt-4o-mini)
• ctxeng.ollamaBaseUrl (default: http://localhost:11434)
• ctxeng.ollamaModels (default: ["llama3","mistral","codellama","phi3"])
• ctxeng.openrouterModel (default: anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet)
• ctxeng.openrouterSiteName (default: CtxEng VS Code)
• ctxeng.model (default: claude-sonnet-4)
• ctxeng.format (default: markdown)
• ctxeng.autowatch (default: false)