DevContext

The DevContext extension provides several tools to manage your AI coding context:

• Auto-Capture: Automatically captures context whenever you save files.
• Save Context: Manually save your current progress using a structured format that includes: Task, Approaches, Decisions, State, Next Steps, and Blockers.
• Resume Context: Load and continue working from a previously saved session.
• Log: Access and view your session history.
• Diff: View the differences between your current state and the last time you saved context.

DevContext stores data in a .devctx/ folder within your repository. It captures the following dimensions of your work to build a persistent 'intent history':

• Task: What you are doing
• Goal: Why you are doing it
• Approaches: What you tried (and what failed)
• Decisions: Key architectural choices
• State: Where you left off

This approach works with any AI tool because it focuses on managing the prompt—the universal interface for LLMs.

Follow these steps to start tracking your intent history in a repository:

1. Initialize: Set up DevContext in your current repository.
2. Work and Save: After a coding session, run devctx save to enter interactive prompts that capture your Task, Approaches, Decisions, and Next Steps.
3. Resume: Run devctx resume to copy a perfectly formatted prompt to your clipboard. You can then paste this into any AI tool (Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) to restore your full context.

# 1. Initialize in your repo
devctx init

# 2. Work on your code... then save context
devctx save

# 3. Resume in ANY editor
devctx resume

Install the DevContext CLI globally using npm to manage AI coding context across sessions and editors.

npm install -g devctx

To use the DevContext VS Code extension, you must first ensure the DevContext CLI is installed and your project is under Git version control.

1. Install the CLI: Install the devctx CLI globally via npm.
2. Initialize Git: Ensure the workspace you are working in has a Git repository initialized.
3. Install Extension: Install the DevContext extension from the VS Code Marketplace.

npm install -g devctx

To allow AI agents like Claude Code or Windsurf to natively read and write context, add DevContext to your Model Context Protocol (MCP) configuration. This exposes tools like devctx_save, devctx_resume, devctx_log and the resource devctx://context.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "devctx": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "devctx", "mcp"]
    }
  }
}

You can customize the behavior of the DevContext extension using the following VS Code settings:

• devctx.autoResume: A boolean setting to enable or disable the automatic resumption of context when you start VS Code.
• devctx.defaultBranch: Specifies the default Git branch used to track context.

All DevContext information (resumed context, logs, and diffs) is displayed in a dedicated VS Code Output Channel named DevContext.

When you run commands like resume, log, or diff, the extension clears the channel and appends a header (e.g., ═══ DevContext Resume ═══) followed by the output from the devctx CLI.

To start using DevContext in a project, you must initialize it within a Git repository. This command creates a .devctx/ directory to store session data and configuration, and automatically updates your .gitignore to ensure context data is not committed to version control.

What happens during initialization:

1. Directory Creation: Creates .devctx/sessions and .devctx/branches directories.
2. Configuration: Generates a config.json file inside .devctx/ containing the version, creation timestamp, and repository name.
3. Git Integration: Appends .devctx/ to your .gitignore file.

Prerequisites:

• The project must be a valid Git repository. If it is not, run git init before initializing DevContext.

# Note: The specific CLI command name is inferred as `devctx init` based on the file path and context.
```bash
devctx init

The DevContext extension adds a status bar item to your VS Code window to provide quick access to your context and visual feedback on your last activity.

• Resume Context: Clicking the status bar item triggers the devctx.resume command, which displays your saved context in the DevContext Output Channel.
• Activity Indicator: The status bar displays the timestamp of your last DevContext entry (e.g., $(history) DevCtx: [2023-10-27 10:00:00]). If no context is found, it displays $(history) DevCtx: No context.

You can control how frequently DevContext performs an auto-save in watch mode.

1. Via CLI Flag: Use the --interval flag to specify the interval in minutes.
2. Via Configuration: Set the watchInterval key in your DevContext configuration file. The value is interpreted as minutes.

If no interval is provided via the CLI, the command falls back to the watchInterval value defined in your configuration.