Our Jira plugin, Timesheets by AppForest, had centralized time tracking at Testlify — but developers still had to stop and switch over to log their hours by hand. The AppForest Timetracker closes that gap. It's a VS Code extension that tracks coding activity right in the editor and turns time logging into a quick action, so engineers can log to Timesheets without leaving the IDE. I owned it end to end, from the idea through publishing on the Marketplace.
What I built
- The extension itself: Built on the official VS Code Extension API, with background processes that track active editor time, file switches, and workspace changes quietly — nothing interrupts the developer.
- Git-aware time logging: The extension reads the current Git branch and pulls the ticket ID out of it, so the time it captures is already tied to the right issue when it's logged into the Timesheets plugin — no hunting for the ticket, no retyping.
- Full lifecycle: I handled the local config UX, secure token storage, and packaging and publishing the build to the Visual Studio Marketplace.
Why it mattered
Taking the manual step out of logging meant the time data flowing into Timesheets was both more complete and more accurate — roughly a 60–70% drop in the effort spent logging hours and far fewer reporting mistakes. That gave leadership cleaner data to plan sprints and bill against.