OpenSpec Explorer

A VS Code sidebar extension for browsing and managing OpenSpec changes and specs in your workspace.

Features

One-Click Initialization

• When opening a workspace without OpenSpec configured, the sidebar displays a welcome view with an Initialize OpenSpec button
• If the openspec CLI is detected, guides you to select an AI tool (supports GitHub Copilot, Claude, Cursor, and 20+ others), generating the full directory structure and skills via CLI
• If the CLI is not installed, offers options to install it or create a basic directory structure only
• All operations affect workspace-level content only — no user-level configuration is modified

Browsing

• Active Changes view: Browse active changes with task progress (e.g. 3/7), schema, and creation date
• Archived Changes view: Browse archived change history
• Specs view: Browse public specs, expand to view Requirements and Scenarios
• Spec coverage heatmap: Each capability/requirement in the Specs view shows how many active changes reference it, with icon colors graduating by density (yellow → orange → red) and tooltips listing specific change names
• Click any artifact (proposal/design/tasks/specs) to open it directly in the editor
• Toggle between Group by Date and Flat View display modes

Actions (triggered via Copilot Chat)

• Apply: Right-click a change → Apply Change, triggers Copilot to execute implementation tasks
• Archive: Archive a single change
• Bulk Archive: Archive multiple changes at once
• Sync Specs: Merge delta specs into public specs
• Sync & Archive & Commit: One-click sync delta specs, archive change, and git commit
• Update Tasks Progress: Check implementation against code and update task completion status
• Summarize Change: Generate a summary of a change (goals, design, specs, task progress)
• Summarize Spec: Generate a summary of a spec (responsibilities, requirements, scenarios)

Other

• Copy Name: Right-click to copy a change name to the clipboard
• Watches the openspec/ directory for changes (including config.yaml), automatically refreshing the TreeView
• All Copilot prompts are customizable via openspec.prompts.* settings

Installation

cd vscode-openspec
npm install
npm run deploy   # Compile, package, and install to current VS Code

Or package manually and install:

npm run package
# Install the generated .vsix file via VS Code "Install from VSIX..."

Activation

• Activates automatically when the workspace contains openspec/config.yaml
• Without config.yaml, the extension still activates and shows an initialization guide in the sidebar

Dependencies

• Read operations (browsing changes/specs) do not require the openspec CLI — files are parsed directly from the file system
• The initialization flow prefers the openspec CLI (npm install -g @fission-ai/openspec) to generate AI tool skills; without the CLI, a basic directory structure can be created
• Write operations are triggered through Copilot Chat using existing skills