Sidemark for VS Code

Sidemark brings MRSF review comments directly into Visual Studio Code — add, manage, navigate, and reanchor comments without ever leaving your editor or touching your Markdown source files.

Install

Search for "Sidemark" in the VS Code Extensions view, or install from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Requirements: VS Code 1.137+ · Git recommended (enables commit-based staleness detection and diff-based reanchoring)

Features

Gutter Icons & Inline Highlights

Every commented line gets a color-coded gutter icon:

Icon	Meaning
💬	Open comment(s)
✅	All resolved
⚠️	Orphaned anchor
🔢	Multiple comments on the same line

Inline/column-span comments are highlighted directly in the editor text with a subtle background color.

Inline Preview Text

Each commented line shows a compact inline preview — similar to how GitLens shows blame annotations — displaying the author and a snippet of the comment text right next to the code.

Rich Hover Cards

Hover over any commented line to see the full comment thread with author, timestamp, status badges, and one-click action links:

• Resolve / Unresolve — toggle comment state
• Reply — add a threaded reply
• Delete — remove the comment

Sidebar Panel

A dedicated Sidemark activity-bar panel lists all comments for the active Markdown file:

• Sort by line number or date
• Toggle resolved comments visibility
• Filter to show unresolved only
• Navigate to any comment with a single click
• Reanchor all comments from the sidebar
• Orphaned comments are highlighted with a warning badge and count
• Add new comments directly from the panel

Automatic Reanchoring on Save

When you save a Markdown file, Sidemark silently reanchors all comments using the repository's Anchor Mesh implementation. It combines verified Git shifts, source-revision projection, Markdown structure, bounded text matching, and nearby high-confidence comments as landmarks.

High-confidence results are applied automatically; uncertain results are flagged for manual review.

See Reanchoring implementation for the non-normative algorithm details.

Interactive Reanchor Review

Run Sidemark: Reanchor Comments from the command palette for a guided review session. Each uncertain result is shown with old/new anchor decorations and accept/reject/skip controls.

Anchor Drift Detection

When you insert or delete lines, the status bar warns that comment anchors may have drifted. Saving the file clears the warning after reanchor runs.

Staleness Warnings

If any comments reference a different git commit than HEAD, the status bar shows an orange warning with the count of stale comments. Click to reanchor.

Commands

Command	Description
Sidemark: Add Line Comment	Add a comment on the current line
Sidemark: Add Comment on Selection	Add an inline comment on the selected text
Sidemark: Reply to Comment	Reply to an existing comment
Sidemark: Resolve Comment	Resolve a comment (with optional cascade)
Sidemark: Unresolve Comment	Unresolve a previously resolved comment
Sidemark: Delete Comment	Delete a comment
Sidemark: Reanchor Comments	Run interactive reanchor for uncertain results
Sidemark: Go to Comment	Navigate to a comment's anchor position
Sidemark: Refresh Comments	Reload the sidecar from disk

All commands are also available from the editor context menu (right-click) on Markdown files.

Default Keyboard Shortcuts

Sidemark ships with default multi-key shortcuts for adding comments in the editor:

Action	Windows / Linux	macOS
Add Comment on Selection	Ctrl+Alt+M, Ctrl+I	Cmd+Alt+M, Cmd+I
Add Line Comment	Ctrl+Alt+M, Ctrl+L	Cmd+Alt+M, Cmd+L

These are chord shortcuts, so press the first key combination and then the second.

Settings

All settings are under the Sidemark section in VS Code Settings.

Setting	Type	Default	Description
sidemark.author	string	""	Author override; when empty, use repository-local Git user.name
sidemark.showResolved	boolean	true	Show resolved comments in decorations and sidebar
sidemark.gutterIcons	boolean	true	Show gutter icons for commented lines
sidemark.inlineHighlights	boolean	true	Show inline background highlights for text-specific comments
sidemark.reanchorOnSave	boolean	true	Automatically reanchor comments on save
sidemark.reanchorThreshold	number	0.6	Fuzzy match threshold for reanchoring (0.0–1.0)
sidemark.reanchorAutoAcceptScore	number	1.0	Auto-accept reanchor results at or above this confidence

Author resolution uses sidemark.author when explicitly configured, then the repository-local Git user.name, then a one-time input prompt. Prompted names are not saved as a global override.

How It Works

Sidemark stores review comments in sidecar files alongside your Markdown documents, following the MRSF v1.0 specification:

docs/
  architecture.md                    ← your document
  architecture.md.review.yaml       ← sidecar with comments

Comments are anchored to specific lines or text ranges using line, end_line, start_column, end_column, and selected_text. When the document is edited, the reanchor algorithm relocates comments automatically.

Alternate Sidecar Location

Place a .mrsf.yaml at your repository root to store sidecars in a central directory:

sidecar_root: .reviews

With this config, the sidecar for docs/architecture.md resolves to .reviews/docs/architecture.md.review.yaml.

Related Tools

• CLI Reference — command-line access to validate, add, resolve, reanchor, and list comments
• MCP Server — AI agent integration via Model Context Protocol
• MRSF Specification — full format specification