How It Works

Three stages: capture → group → synthesize. Everything runs inside the extension — no external processes.

Stage 1 — Capture

The extension listens to VS Code events and writes them to ~/.devlog/events-YYYY-MM-DD.jsonl as they happen:

Never captured: source code contents, file contents, stdout/stderr, clipboard, browser activity.

Stage 2 — Session grouping

Events are grouped into work sessions using a 30-minute inactivity gap. Each session extracts: branch name, commits (enriched from git if messages are missing), files worked on, error count, and languages used.

Stage 3 — AI synthesis

A structured digest is built and sent to your AI provider. File changes are described meaningfully:

Four AI calls run in parallel: summary, standup, work areas, and decisions. Results are saved to ~/.devlog/log-YYYY-MM-DD.json.

Commit enrichment

If the extension wasn't running when you committed (editor was closed), the event has a hash but no message. At synthesis time, DevLog runs git show <hash> to backfill missing messages — so your standup is specific even for commits made before DevLog was installed.

User filtering

All commit filtering uses git config user.email. Both the real-time watcher and the 90-day bootstrap filter by this email — teammates' commits never appear in your log.

Storage

All files are human-readable JSON. You can inspect or delete them at any time.