Pieces for VS Code 0.5.0: Introducing Explore with Pieces Insights 👀

Today, we’re launching a brand-new feature for the Pieces for Developers VS Code Extension: Explore with Pieces Insights. This feature will help developers of all skill levels understand new codebases more quickly, easily document their code, and help large teams to collaborate by writing clear, helpful comments. Check it out ⬇️

Explore with Pieces Insights

There’s a new functionality of the Pieces for Developers VS Code Extension in town! Exploring Materials with Pieces Insights allows you to learn more about a code snippet without saving it to your repository.

To Explore a material:

1. Highlight a code snippet in your editor
2. Right-click and select “Explore with Pieces Insights” or hit [Shift+Alt+E] (Windows)/[Shift+Option+E] (MacOS)
3. Click the “View Insights” success message in the lower right corner of your editor
4. Pieces will open a new window with a markdown file that showcases your snippet, its description, and other associated metadata.

To revisit explored materials, check out the new section titled “Explored Materials & Snippet Insights” in the Extension Tree View. Here, you can view your explored materials, save them to Pieces, or delete them— just right-click.

If you’d like to automatically save your explored materials to your Pieces repository, toggle on “Explore and Save” in your extension settings.

Note: In order to Explore Materials, you must be connected to your Pieces Cloud.

Document with Pieces Insights

Are you loving the Pieces-generated explanations of your Explored Materials? You can automatically insert those descriptions as comments above the explored material!

By default, the Pieces for VS Code Extension will automatically add comments of the description above your Explored Materials. To turn this off, uncheck “Document with Pieces Insights” in the Extension settings.

Join our Beta Testing Program

Do you want to try the newest features before they’re released? Do you want to make a difference in Pieces’ development? Sign up for our Beta Testing Program!

Support

As always, if you run into issues or have feedback, please fill out this quick form or email us at support@pieces.app and we’ll be in touch as soon as possible!