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Aniket Raj
Aniket Raj

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Stop Alt-Tabbing to Check Metrics: Meet Vitals for VS Code 🚀

The Problem: Context Switching
As developers, we live in our IDE. But when we need to check how our app is performing—CPU usage, memory leaks, or HTTP latency—we have to alt-tab away to a browser, log into Grafana or Prometheus, and hunt for the right dashboard. It breaks our flow.

The Solution: Vitals
I built Vitals to bridge this gap. Vitals is an open-source VS Code extension that brings real-time observability directly into your editor.

It connects cleanly to Prometheus to visualize critical system and specific application metrics without you ever leaving your code.

✨ Key Features

  1. Real-Time Metrics 📊 Visualize critical metrics with auto-updating, interactive charts.

CPU & Memory: Track resource usage trends instantly.
Request Latency: Monitor p50, p95, and p99 response times.
Custom Metrics: Support for any Prometheus metric you care about.

  1. Live Log Stream 📜 Forget tail -f. Vitals gives you a terminal-like log viewer right in the dashboard with:

Syntax Highlighting: Color-coded for INFO, WARN, ERROR.
Search & Filter: Quickly isolate the logs you need.

  1. Zero Configuration ⚡ If you have Prometheus running locally (e.g., via Docker or Homebrew), Vitals auto-discovers it. No complex JSON config required to get started—just install and view.

🛠️ Quick Start
Install the Extension: Search for "Vitals" in the VS Code Marketplace.
Run Prometheus: Ensure Prometheus is running (default port :9090).
Open Dashboard: Press Ctrl+Shift+P -> Vitals: Open Dashboard.
That's it! You should see your metrics streaming immediately.

🔮 What's Next?
We are actively working on v0.3.0, which will include:

Multi-datasource support (Datadog, AWS CloudWatch).
AI-powered anomaly detection.
Historical data analysis.
Try it out!
We’re open source and love feedback.

Download: VS Code Marketplace
Open VSX: Vitals
Source Code: GitHub (Give us a star! ⭐)
Docs: Get Started
Happy Coding! 💻

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