First public pre-release.
SynapTrace is a local-first VS Code extension for AI-assisted coding. It traces how a project evolves, helps you understand the changes that matter, surfaces the knowledge needed to own the work, and connects those needs to contextual teaching.
Included in this release
- Trajectory — the recent path, the current arc, and the project-level view of how the work actually evolved, including interruptions and returns.
- Changes — the mechanism behind an important change: what it does, where it sits, what behavior existed before, and what exists now.
- Gap Map — the concepts and capabilities the current work depends on, grounded in the project and compared against observed evidence.
- Teaching — Practice, Focused, and Create depths, carried directly from a capability selected in the Gap Map. Create produces a runnable
.ipynbnotebook grounded in the project. - Repository baseline — joining an existing codebase produces an immediate local picture of what exists, without inventing work, intent, or history that SynapTrace never observed.
- Configurable capture — supported AI CLI development activity is captured locally; sources can be switched on and off individually.
- Bring your own key — AI-assisted CLI analysis uses the AI provider you configure. It is a separate control from capture and is off until you enable it. API keys are entered through VS Code's secure input and held in VS Code SecretStorage.
- Cost observability — provider usage is recorded so the cost of analysis is visible rather than implied.
- Local project state — project history lives in
<workspace>/.synaptrace/and is migrated automatically. It survives extension install, reinstall, upgrade, and uninstall. - Settings — General, AI Provider, Capture, Data & Storage, and Diagnostics, including a connection test and sanitized runtime diagnostics.
Notes for this preview
- This release targets Windows x64. Other platforms will be added once they have been tested through the same packaged-extension lifecycle.
- SynapTrace requires no account and has no cloud control plane. Nothing leaves your machine unless you supply a provider key and enable AI-assisted CLI analysis.
- As a pre-release, the product surface and supported integrations will continue to change between versions.
Feedback: contact@synaptraceapp.com