AI Diff Viewer — my VSCode extension is live on the Marketplace
A calmer way to review AI CLI edits in VSCode: inline hunks in the editor you already have open, opt-in split-view diff, hover actions. Works with Claude Code, Codex, and Qwen.
Just shipped AI Diff Viewer to the VSCode Marketplace. It's the small extension I built because the default AI-diff experience was driving me up the wall.
Why I built it
Most "AI diff" tooling pops a split-view diff editor every time the model writes a file, then re-opens it whenever you focus back. In a real review session this turns into:
edit → diff pops → close → click file → diff pops → close → context-switch → diff pops → …
AI Diff Viewer flips the default. AI edits land as inline decorations inside the editor you already have open — green/red gutter, hunk markers, CodeLens accept/revert — and the split-view diff is something you open on demand. The classic auto-open behaviour is one setting away if you actually want it.
What it does
- Inline review — hunks render directly in the file. No editor hijacking, no popups, no extra tab.
- Opt-in split-view — single setting (
autoOpenDiffEditor) or in-panel toggle controls auto-open. - Session panel — tree of all pending files. Hover a row for
Open file/Open diff/Accept/Revert. - Bulk actions —
Accept All/Revert Allat the top of the pending list. One click, everything applied. - Hunk-level control — CodeLens
Accept/Revertabove each hunk inside the diff editor. - Keyboard nav —
Alt+H/Alt+Lto jump between edited files,Cmd+Shift+Y/Cmd+Shift+Zto accept/revert the active file. - Claude CLI hooks — one-click install of pre/post hooks into
~/.claude/settings.jsonfor precise snapshotting. - Multi-tool — Codex, Qwen, and any other CLI work out of the box via the workspace file watcher. No hooks required.
Install
ext install mtglitch.ai-diff-viewer
Or search AI Diff Viewer in the Extensions sidebar.
How it works under the hood
- Snapshot — before the AI CLI writes a file, the extension records the original content (via Claude pre-hook, or by reading from disk on
onDidChangefor other tools). - Detect — after the write, the post-write content is diffed against the snapshot with a Myers-like algorithm to produce hunks.