I built my first VS Code extension: a TODO sidebar tracker

Tristan — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:38:27 +0000

I'm a CS student about to graduate with a Bachelors, and I wanted a project I could actually finish and put on GitHub. Built Waypoint, a sidebar extension that finds every TODO, FIXME, HACK, and NOTE comment across your project and lists them in one place.

What it does:

Click any item to jump straight to that line
Updates live every time you save a file
Right-click to mark something done without deleting the comment
Custom tags and colors, fully configurable

Not on the Marketplace yet, working through the publisher setup, but you can grab the .vsix and install it manually:

tristancable / Waypoint

Find and jump to TODO comments across your project

Waypoint

Find and jump to TODO comments scattered across your project, all in one sidebar panel.

Installation

This extension isn't published to the VS Code Marketplace yet, so install manually instead:

Download the latest .vsix file from the Releases page
In VS Code, open the Extensions view
Click the ... menu (top-right of the Extensions panel), then Install from VSIX...
Select the downloaded file

Features

Sidebar panel: lists every TODO, FIXME, HACK, and NOTE comment in your workspace, grouped by file
Click to jump: click any item to open that exact line
Live updates: the list refreshes automatically every time you save a file
Mark as done: right-click any item to check it off without deleting the comment
Custom tags & colors: configure your own comment tags and assign each one a color
Status bar count: see your total open todo…

View on GitHub

Download from the Releases page
Extensions view → ... menu → Install from VSIX...

This was my first real extension project, so I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback, bugs, or feature ideas. Thanks for reading!