Workspace Reviews

Why This Exists

VS Code's built-in Source Control view is great for local work, but it is not a great fit for pull request review. It mostly shows uncommitted working tree changes, while review often needs a base-branch-oriented diff that answers: "what does this branch add on top of its base?"

The official GitHub Pull Requests extension can provide that kind of review diff, but it can be awkward in multi-root workspaces. In particular, adding or removing specific workspace folders from the PR sidebar can be unreliable when several repositories are open at once.

Workspace Reviews exists for that gap: reviewing changes across multiple workspace folders with a PR-like, base-aware diff flow, without depending on the full pull request extension workflow.

Features

The extension adds its own Activity Bar view with a Repositories tree. It is built for a workspace-first review flow:

one repository entry per workspace repo
automatic base branch detection with per-repository override
merge-base-backed review diffs
combines committed, staged, unstaged, and untracked changes into one tree
directory-grouped changed files
colors files and folders using Git-style decorations
repository, folder, and file context menus
Open Repository Tree command to expand a chosen repository from the Command Palette
Collapse All command scoped to the Workspace Reviews tree
Send Path to Terminal command for repositories, folders, and files
default keybinding for path sending:
- cmd+l on macOS
- ctrl+l elsewhere
- active only when the Workspace Reviews tree has focus

The goal is to make "what changed in this workspace?" easy to inspect without opening a pull request first or checking out review branches in a separate UI.

How Review Diffs Work

Diffs are opened against the repository's comparison base, not the live tip of the selected base branch.

That means:

committed changes are shown from the merge-base to the current branch
local staged and unstaged edits are included in the tree
untracked files appear as added files
deleted files open with an empty working-copy side

This keeps the review view closer to a "what this branch and working tree add on top of the shared base" model.

Sidebar Actions

Repository nodes support:

Workspace Reviews: Open Repository Tree
Workspace Reviews: Send Path to Terminal
Workspace Reviews: Pick Base Branch
Workspace Reviews: Clear Base Branch Override

Folder and file nodes support:

Workspace Reviews: Send Path to Terminal

When multiple items are selected, Send Path to Terminal joins the absolute paths with , and sends the result to the active terminal. If no terminal is open, the extension creates one named Workspace Reviews.

Usage

Open a workspace that contains one or more Git repositories.
Open the Workspace Reviews Activity Bar view.
Expand a repository under Repositories.
Select a changed file to open a review diff.
Use repository context actions to change or clear the base branch when needed.

Keyboard-driven tree actions use the selected tree item or selected tree items. For example, cmd+l / ctrl+l sends the selected repository, folder, or file path to the terminal. Focused-but-not-selected rows are not reliably exposed by the public VS Code TreeView API.

Configuration