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.

AI Diff Viewer — Session panel with pending changes and split-view diff editor

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 All at the top of the pending list. One click, everything applied.

Hunk-level control — CodeLens Accept / Revert above each hunk inside the diff editor.

Keyboard nav — Alt+H / Alt+L to jump between edited files, Cmd+Shift+Y / Cmd+Shift+Z to accept/revert the active file.

Claude CLI hooks — one-click install of pre/post hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json for precise snapshotting.

Multi-tool — Codex, Qwen, and any other CLI work out of the box via the workspace file watcher. No hooks required.

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 onDidChange for other tools).

Detect — after the write, the post-write content is diffed against the snapshot with a Myers-like algorithm to produce hunks.

Render — inline decorations and CodeLens are drawn over the live document. The Session panel is updated. Split-view diff opens only if autoOpenDiffEditor is true or you ask for it explicitly.

Resolve — Accept clears the snapshot (changes stay on disk). Revert writes the original back. Both fire the same internal event, so the panel and decorations refresh automatically.

State is persisted in extension storage, so pending diffs survive a window reload.

Credit where it's due

This is a fork of konan-1947/ai-cli-diff-view at upstream v1.0.12. All credit for the snapshot/hunk/CodeLens engine and the Claude hook installer goes to the original author — I only changed the default UX so split-view stops jumping at me, added hover actions on the Session panel rows, and wired up bulk Accept/Revert in the header.

If you want the classic upstream behaviour back, install this fork and set ai-cli-diff-view.autoOpenDiffEditor: true. The engine underneath is identical.

Roadmap

Search/filter inside the Session pending tree.

Per-language hunk grouping (jump straight to TS files, etc).

Codex/Qwen-specific hook installers (parity with Claude).

Optional Telegram/Slack ping when a session finishes.

Currently shipped as v1.0.4.

Why I built it

What it does

Install

How it works under the hood

Credit where it's due

Roadmap