extensions.md

Writing Hunk extensions

A Hunk extension entry is one TypeScript (or JavaScript) file that default-exports a function. Hunk imports it at startup and hands it an API object. An entry may stand alone or be declared by a folder's optional package.json manifest; no build step is required.

// ~/.config/hunk/extensions/hello.ts
import type { HunkExtensionAPI } from "hunkdiff/extension";

export default function (hunk: HunkExtensionAPI) {
  hunk.on("startup", (_event, ctx) => {
    ctx.notify("Hello from my extension");
  });
}

The extension API is experimental. Everything below works today, but the hunkdiff/extension surface may change in breaking ways between minor releases while it stabilizes against real third-party extensions. Breaking changes will be called out in release notes, and hunk.apiVersion identifies the surface an extension was written against.

Writing one with a coding agent? hunk skill path hunk-extensions prints a bundled skill that maps the touchpoints below for agents, the way hunk skill path does for reviewing.

Where Hunk looks for extensions

Discovery runs group by group, alphabetically by resolved path within each group — a folder extension's entries sort together, at the folder's own path. The first occurrence of a resolved path wins, so a path you pass explicitly keeps its origin even if the same file is also discovered somewhere else.

Group	Source	Trust
1	--extension <path> (repeatable)	runs immediately
2	[extensions] paths in your user config	runs immediately
3	~/.config/hunk/extensions/	runs immediately
4	.hunk/extensions/ in the repo under review	prompts for trust
4	[extensions] paths in the repo .hunk/config.toml	prompts for trust

The two repo-local sources share a group number because they are one group: both are repo-controlled, so they share a trust decision and their paths are sorted together rather than one source being loaded ahead of the other.

A directory source matches *.ts, *.tsx, *.js, *.jsx, *.mjs directly inside it, plus one level of folder extensions, so a folder extension can keep helper modules beside its entry file.

A folder is an extension if it declares its entry files in a package.json, or failing that if it has an index.{ts,tsx,js,jsx,mjs} (in that preference order, so a folder shipping both a source and a built entry resolves the same everywhere). The manifest field is hunk:

~/.config/hunk/extensions/my-ext/
  package.json          # {"hunk": {"extensions": ["./src/index.ts"]}}
  node_modules/         # bun install / npm install, right here
  src/
    index.ts            # the declared entry
    helper.ts

The manifest wins over the index.* fallback, and its paths resolve against the folder. It may list more than one entry, in which case each entry loads as its own extension in the order the manifest gives. Each one is identified by its file stem; when stems collide, later entries receive a numeric suffix while avoiding ids already claimed by other entries in the manifest.

Because the manifest is a real package.json, a folder extension may depend on npm packages: declare them, install them into the folder's own node_modules, and imports resolve from the entry file the way they do in any other package.

The hunk field may also state the minimum extension API version the folder needs:

{
  "name": "my-ext",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "What the extension does",
  "hunk": { "extensions": ["./src/index.ts"], "apiVersion": 3 }
}

A Hunk whose extension API is older than apiVersion refuses the folder with a startup notice naming the version it would need, instead of failing somewhere inside the factory with whatever error the missing surface happens to produce. Omit it while you only use surface that has been around a while; declare it when you depend on something recent (the current version is exported as HUNK_EXTENSION_API_VERSION from hunkdiff/extension and handed to factories as hunk.apiVersion). The standard name, version, and description fields are how tooling and humans identify a shared extension, so fill them in on anything you publish.

Pointing --extension or [extensions] paths straight at a directory works either way: a directory that is itself a folder extension loads as that one extension, so its helper modules stay helpers. A directory that is not is treated as a directory of extensions and scanned with the patterns above.

An extension's id is its file stem, or its folder name for <name>/index.ts. A manifest that declares a single entry also keeps the folder's name, whatever the entry file is called. The id is what [extension.<id>] config tables key off, so moving a single-file extension into a folder of the same name — or later giving that folder a manifest — keeps its config working.

The id is also the namespace your extension owns: its commands are <id>.<commandId> and its panes <id>:<viewId>. So the id has to be spelled like a name — starting with a letter or digit, then letters, digits, -, or _. A dot or a colon would make those composed ids ambiguous, and hunk, git, jj, and sl are reserved for what Hunk ships. An extension whose id breaks a rule is skipped with a startup notice naming the file; rename it and it loads. If two discovery sources offer the same id, the first in source order loads and the other is skipped the same way, since one id cannot own two config tables.

--no-extensions disables user extensions for one run — nothing on disk is read, let alone executed. Use it when triaging a bug.

--extension is explicit user intent: the file loads immediately, with no trust prompt, even when the path points inside the repository under review. Never pass a path you have not read — including one copy-pasted from a repository's own README.

Sharing and installing extensions

Extensions are shared as plain git repositories — there is no registry to publish to. hunk extension install clones one into a managed directory (~/.config/hunk/extensions/installed/<repo-name>/), verifies it actually contains an extension, installs its npm dependencies when it declares any, and records the source and resolved commit:

hunk extension install acme/hunk-word-diff          # GitHub shorthand
hunk extension install acme/hunk-word-diff@v1.2.0   # pin a tag, branch, or commit
hunk extension install git:codeberg.org/acme/ext    # any host; https:// is assumed
hunk extension install https://github.com/acme/hunk-word-diff.git
hunk extension install ~/dev/hunk-word-diff         # a local checkout, for testing

Managed installs load through the global source group — same origin, same precedence, no trust prompt — because installing one is the explicit consent: the install asks for confirmation (or --yes) after stating that extensions run with your full user permissions. Only install repositories you trust.

hunk extension list shows every managed install with its version, commit, and source. hunk extension update [name] re-clones one install (or all of them) from its recorded source — an install pinned with @ref stays at that ref until you re-install with a different one. hunk extension remove <name> deletes the install and its record. Managed installs never collide with extensions you copied into ~/.config/hunk/extensions/ by hand, and the installer refuses to overwrite an unmanaged directory of the same name.

Publishing an extension

A publishable extension repository is just the folder-extension layout at the repository root:

hunk-word-diff/
  package.json          # name, version, description, hunk field
  index.ts              # or entries declared in "hunk": {"extensions": [...]}
  README.md

To publish one:

1. Give package.json a real name, version, and description, declare entries under the hunk field, and state "hunk": {"apiVersion": N} if you rely on recent API surface (see the manifest).
2. Keep it dependency-light. Declared dependencies are installed with bun install at install time when the user has bun on PATH; without it they get a warning and instructions. react, @opentui/*, and hunkdiff/extension come from the host at runtime and belong in devDependencies (types only), never dependencies.
3. Tag releases (v1.2.0) so users can pin with @v1.2.0 instead of tracking your default branch.
4. Push the repository to any git host and add the hunk-extension GitHub topic so people can find it: every public repository with that topic shows up at https://github.com/topics/hunk-extension.

Before publishing, exercise the exact layout users will install: hunk extension install /path/to/your/checkout installs from a local repository, and hunk diff --extension /path/to/your/checkout loads it for one run without installing anything.

Bundled extensions

Every VCS backend Hunk ships — Git, Jujutsu, and Sapling — is an extension, and so is the built-in file-navigation pane. They live in src/extensions/default/, are compiled into the binary, and register through the same hunk.registerVcsAdapter and hunk.registerPane this guide documents. There is no private registration path.

Git in particular is the reason: it is the backend that exercises every integration point there is — exact file sources, skipped-too-large placeholders, untracked files, watch plans, rich failures — so running it through the published API is what keeps that API honest. Anything Git can do, your adapter can do, because Git does it the same way you would.

Bundled extensions differ from yours in three ways, all of them consequences of being Hunk's own code:

• They are statically imported, so they load synchronously, before config resolution picks the session's VCS.
• They are implicitly trusted: no discovery, no trust prompt, and no [extension.<id>] config table.
• They stay loaded under --no-extensions and [extensions] enabled = false. Those switches exist to triage extensions you installed; losing VCS support from a debugging flag would break every workflow there is.

Failure isolation still applies to them. The ids git, jj, and sl are reserved as a result — see registerVcsAdapter below — and so is hunk, the id the bundled files pane and every built-in command are named under.

Trust

Extensions run with your user permissions, exactly like a shell dotfile. That is fine for extensions you installed yourself, and not fine for extensions that came with a repository you are about to review — pointing a diff tool at unfamiliar code is a normal thing to do, and it must never execute that code.

So repo-local sources are gated. The first time Hunk finds extensions in a repository's .hunk/extensions (or repo-config paths), it skips them and asks:

Run this repository's extensions?

  This repository contains extensions in .hunk/extensions.
  Extensions run with your user permissions.

  enter/t trust · esc not now · n never

• Trust records the decision and reloads the session so the repo's extensions take effect immediately.
• Not now (also Esc) dismisses without recording anything; you will be asked again next time.
• Never records a denial so Hunk stops offering.

Decisions are stored per repository root in ~/.config/hunk/state.json. The prompt is a normal dialog over the review stream, not a gate in front of it: you can dismiss it and keep reviewing.

Trust is keyed by the repo root's path, not by the repository's identity — the same model VS Code workspace trust uses. If you delete a trusted checkout and a different repository later occupies that path, it inherits the decision. Clear the entry from state.json if that matters for a path you reuse.

Failure isolation

A broken extension should not break review. An extension that fails to import, has no default export, or throws from its factory is skipped, its partial registrations are rolled back, and it becomes a startup notice in the footer. A handler or transform that throws later is reported as a warning naming the extension, and everything else keeps running. Event handlers receive frozen copies of the changeset, so accidental mutation throws inside the handler instead of corrupting the review.

This is crash containment, not a sandbox. Per-file metadata inside event payloads is shared with the renderer for performance and is not frozen, and an extension runs with your full user permissions — it can do anything your shell can. The containment protects you from bugs, not from code you should not have loaded in the first place. For reviewed files, prefer ctx.workspace. It attributes writes to the extension and asks for consent.

The API

The factory receives one object. Registration calls are only valid while the factory is running; Hunk seals the object afterwards so a deferred callback cannot mutate the registry mid-session. Keep the factory registration-only: start watchers, processes, connections, and other long-lived resources from startup, and release them from shutdown. Extension-registry reloads create new instances and run that shutdown/startup pair around the replacement.

hunk.apiVersion

The API generation this Hunk speaks (currently 7). Branch on it if you want one file to support several Hunk versions. Version 7 adds the current source line to command selection snapshots. Version 6 adds session behavior, terminal-command observation, and live navigation/dialogs in event handlers; version 5 added line highlighters and line-granular navigation (revealLine); version 4 added keyboard modes and docked panes, with API-v3 sidebar names remaining as deprecated aliases.

hunk.configureSession(options)

Request host-level behavior for the review session loading the extension. Use { viewPreferences: "transient" } for training, demos, and presentations that deliberately exercise view controls but must never offer to save their final practice state into the user's config. If any loaded extension requests it, the shared session skips the save-view-preferences prompt on quit.

hunk.configureSession({ viewPreferences: "transient" });

The default is { viewPreferences: "default" }. Like every registration-time call, this must run synchronously while the factory is loading.

hunk.registerTheme(theme)

Contribute one selectable theme. The object is the same shape as a [themes.<id>] config table:

hunk.registerTheme({
  id: "midnight-review",
  label: "Midnight Review",
  base: "catppuccin-mocha",
  accent: "#7fd1ff",
  syntaxScopes: { "keyword.operator": "#7fd1ff" },
});

Theme ids must be lowercase words separated by - or _ and cannot reuse a built-in id. Config-defined themes always win over extension themes for the same id; the loser is reported as a startup notice. Extension themes appear in the selector after config themes, in load order.

hunk.registerFileLanguage(extension, language)

Map a file extension to a syntax-highlighting language. The extension may be written with or without a leading dot and is lowercased.

hunk.registerFileLanguage(".zig", "zig");
hunk.registerFileLanguage("bzl", "python");

Later registrations win over earlier ones. Hunk's own .mts and .cts mappings cannot be overridden; attempts are skipped with a notice.

hunk.registerVcsAdapter(adapter)

Contribute an additional VCS backend. This is the same call Hunk's own bundled Git, Jujutsu, and Sapling backends make.

hunk.registerVcsAdapter({
  id: "hg",
  name: "Mercurial",
  detect: (cwd) => (existsSync(join(cwd, ".hg")) ? { id: "hg", repoRoot: cwd } : null),
  operations: {
    "working-tree-diff": {
      async load(input, ctx) {
        return {
          repoRoot: ctx.cwd,
          sourceLabel: ctx.cwd,
          title: "Mercurial working copy",
          patchText: await runHgDiff(ctx.cwd),
          untrackedPaths: await listHgUnknownFiles(ctx.cwd),
        };
      },
    },
  },
});

The ids Hunk ships with — git, jj, and sl — are reserved. An adapter that reuses one is skipped with a notice.

operations is optional and may implement any of working-tree-diff, revision-show, and stash-show; an operation you leave out — or leaving the map off entirely — produces a clear "not supported" error for that command instead of a crash.

A load result is patch text plus how to label it. Everything else on it is optional, and each optional field buys one thing:

Field	What it adds
untrackedPaths	files your VCS calls unknown, synthesized into added-file diffs
readFileSource	exact whole-file contents, for context expansion and highlighting
sourceCacheKey	stable source-snapshot identity for highlight reuse across reloads
extraFiles	files reviewed outside the patch, including skipped placeholders

untrackedPaths is the shorthand: list the repo-root-relative paths your VCS reports as unknown and Hunk synthesizes the added-file diffs for you, skipping binaries and files too large to render. Honor input.options.excludeUntracked when you do, so --exclude-untracked still means what it says. The other two are covered below.

Detection order

Detection prefers the nearest checkout: a Git repository nested inside a jj workspace is reviewed as Git, whatever the priorities say. The same rule covers your adapter — a Mercurial checkout inside a Git repository is reviewed as Mercurial. detectionPriority only decides which backend wins when several recognize the same directory — the colocated case, where one working copy carries two sets of markers.

Adapter	Priority
bundled jj	200
bundled sl	100
bundled git	0 (HUNK_VCS_DETECTION_BASELINE_PRIORITY)
your adapter, by default	-100 (HUNK_DEFAULT_VCS_DETECTION_PRIORITY)

Higher is consulted first; equal priorities fall back to registration order. jj and Sapling sit above Git because a colocated jj repository — or a Sapling repository created with sl init --git — also carries Git metadata, and the Git view is the wrong one.

The default puts your adapter below Git, so installing an extension never silently changes how an existing repository is reviewed. Set detectionPriority explicitly to outrank a shipped backend; it is your machine.

import { HUNK_VCS_DETECTION_BASELINE_PRIORITY } from "hunkdiff/extension";

hunk.registerVcsAdapter({
  id: "hg",
  name: "Mercurial",
  detectionPriority: HUNK_VCS_DETECTION_BASELINE_PRIORITY + 10,
  detect,
});

Detection runs the same way for every adapter, whichever tier registered it: the nearest checkout wins, detectionPriority breaks ties between adapters that recognize the same root, and equal priorities fall back to registration order. Config resolves the session's VCS before your extension has been imported, so detection runs again once extensions are loaded — with the full adapter list — and that second answer is the one the session uses.

What detection never overrides is an explicit choice: a vcs = "<id>" in Hunk config naming a backend this session loaded is honored as-is, however near a checkout some other adapter finds. A repository-local adapter can bootstrap a provider Hunk has never seen because .hunk itself establishes the project root; global, config-path, and --extension adapters also participate in a staged root/config pass before the review loads. When the final root only adds repo candidates, Hunk extends the provisional registry instead of executing its already loaded factories again. If repo config changes an existing extension's factory config, Hunk sends that provisional instance shutdown before rebuilding it.

Watch support

--watch works through extension adapters. Each operation may add:

• watchSignature(input, ctx) — a cheap fingerprint of the reviewed state. Hunk polls it and reloads when it changes.
• watchPlan(input, ctx) — the filesystem targets that cover that state, so Hunk reacts to events instead of polling on a timer.

watchPlan: (input, ctx) => ({
  coverage: "hybrid",
  targets: [
    {
      kind: "directory-tree",
      directory: ctx.cwd,
      ignoredRoots: [join(ctx.cwd, ".hg")],
      sources: ["worktree"],
    },
  ],
}),

coverage: "hybrid" promises the targets cover the reviewed state. Leaving watchPlan out is equivalent to poll-only and still works — it just costs a subprocess per tick.

Exact file sources

A patch carries the changed lines and a little context, and nothing else. If your VCS can produce a file's whole contents on each side, say so with readFileSource and Hunk will expand context past the hunk, highlight against the real file, and word-diff accurately.

async load(input, ctx) {
  // Pin the revisions while the operation loads, then close over them: by the
  // time Hunk asks for a file, nothing can have moved underneath it.
  const [oldRev, newRev] = await resolveHgRevisions(input, ctx.cwd);

  return {
    repoRoot: ctx.cwd,
    sourceLabel: ctx.cwd,
    title: "Mercurial working copy",
    patchText: await runHgDiff(ctx.cwd),
    sourceCacheKey: `${oldRev}:${newRev}`,
    readFileSource: async ({ path, previousPath, changeType, side }) => {
      if (side === "old") {
        return changeType === "new" ? null : hgCat(oldRev, previousPath ?? path);
      }
      return changeType === "deleted" ? null : hgCat(newRev, path);
    },
  };
}

Return null for a side that has no content — the old side of an added file, a path the revision never contained — rather than throwing. Return { kind: "too-large", maxBytes } when fetching the source would exceed your resource limit; Hunk shows expansion as unavailable without treating the result as an extension failure. Hunk calls the reader at most once per file and side and caches what it resolves, so you do not need your own cache, and it never calls it for a file the diff reports as binary. When equivalent reloads close over the same source base, return the same opaque sourceCacheKey so Hunk can reuse its highlighted output. An equal per-file patch plus that key must guarantee equal old/new source answers for the file; change it when source state outside the patch changes. Omit it when the adapter cannot prove stable identity and Hunk will invalidate conservatively. Leaving readFileSource off is fine: Hunk falls back to the content the patch itself carries, which renders the same diff with less context available.

Files outside the patch

extraFiles lists files to review that your patchText does not contain, in the order they should appear. Each entry is one of two kinds, and Hunk builds the diff model for both — you describe files, you never assemble them.

A patch entry is a file with its own one-file diff. Reach for it when your VCS produces better text for a file than Hunk reading the working copy would — its own binary detection, its own path quoting:

extraFiles: [
  {
    kind: "patch",
    path: "notes.md",
    patchText: await hgDiffOneFile("notes.md"),
    isUntracked: true,
  },
];

A skipped entry is a file Hunk should list but not render. Reviewing a multi-hundred-megabyte generated file costs more than it is worth, so report the file and why instead of producing a diff nothing will read:

extraFiles: [
  {
    kind: "skipped",
    path: "dist/bundle.js",
    reason: "too-large",
    changeType: "change",
    stats: { additions: 100_001, deletions: 0 },
    statsTruncated: true,
  },
];

readFileSource covers the patch entries too; a skipped entry has no content to read, so it never gets a source reader.

untrackedPaths remains the shorthand for the common case: list the paths your VCS calls unknown and Hunk synthesizes the added-file diffs from the working copy, skipping binaries and files too large to render. Use extraFiles instead only when your VCS renders those files better than a plain read would.

Moved lines

input.options.colorMoved is true when the user asked for move detection. Hunk reads move classes back out of the patch itself, so emit ANSI-colored diff text painting moved additions cyan and moved deletions magenta — what git diff --color-moved produces — and those lines render as moved. This is ordinary post-processing over whatever patch text an adapter returns, not a Git special case. A backend with no notion of moved lines can ignore the option.

Failures the user can fix

Throw a HunkExtensionUserError when the problem is how Hunk was invoked rather than a bug — no repository here, an unresolvable revision, a missing binary. Hunk prints the message without a stack trace and lists the suggestions beneath it. Anything else is reported as an unexpected error.

import { HunkExtensionUserError } from "hunkdiff/extension";

throw new HunkExtensionUserError("`hunk stash show` is not supported by Mercurial.", {
  suggestions: ["Use `hunk show <rev>` to review a commit instead."],
});

Hunk detects this structurally — an object whose name is "HunkExtensionUserError" with an optional suggestions array of strings — so a plain-JavaScript extension, or one bundling its own copy of the class, is treated the same way. HUNK_EXTENSION_USER_ERROR_NAME is exported if you would rather not hard-code the string. Hunk's own bundled Git, Jujutsu, and Sapling backends raise their failures exactly this way.

hunk.registerPane(pane)

Render a React component on the left, right, top, or bottom edge of the review. Pair it with registerCommand so a key opens it:

// ~/.config/hunk/extensions/flat-pane.tsx
import { useMemo } from "react";
import type { ExtensionPaneProps, HunkExtensionAPI } from "hunkdiff/extension";

function FlatPane({ files, selectedFileId, theme, actions }: ExtensionPaneProps) {
  const ordered = useMemo(() => [...files].sort((a, b) => a.path.localeCompare(b.path)), [files]);

  return (
    <scrollbox scrollY={true} width="100%" height="100%">
      {ordered.map((file) => (
        <text
          key={file.id}
          content={` ${file.path}  +${file.stats.additions} -${file.stats.deletions}`}
          style={{
            fg: file.id === selectedFileId ? theme.accent : theme.text,
            bg: theme.panel,
          }}
          onMouseDown={() => actions.selectFile(file.id)}
        />
      ))}
    </scrollbox>
  );
}

export default function (hunk: HunkExtensionAPI) {
  hunk.registerPane({
    id: "flat",
    title: "Flat files",
    placement: "right",
    component: FlatPane,
  });
  hunk.registerCommand({ id: "toggle-flat", title: "Toggle flat pane", key: "ctrl+f" }, (ctx) => {
    ctx.panes.toggle("flat");
  });
}

placement defaults to "left". Left/right panes use width; top/bottom panes use height. Both accept { preferred, min?, max? }; equal bounds make a fixed pane. Defaults are { preferred: 34, min: 22 } columns and { preferred: 8, min: 3 } rows.

Use defaultOpen to open a pane initially, replaces: "hunk:files" to replace the initial files pane (and override defaultOpen), and available(context) to hide it conditionally. One pane may replace each named target; the first registration owns that slot and later claims are skipped with a warning. replaces may also name another pane by its fully qualified "<extensionId>:<paneId>" key, and Hunk follows those replacement chains.

hunk:files is a named role, not a left-edge location. The hunk.view.toggleFilesPane command (s by default) and View → Files pane follow the resolved owner of that slot, whether the replacement is on the left, right, top, or bottom. They toggle only that owner; independently registered panes keep their own open state. User remaps and unbindings of hunk.view.toggleFilesPane apply to the resolved slot in the usual way. The former hunk.view.toggleSidebar id remains a compatibility alias.

currentLine: true opts into the opaque currentLine.render(side, width) painter. The installable current-line-lens example uses this API; it is not bundled Hunk UI.

Import react normally — Hunk serves its own React instance to extension files at import time, so hooks, context, and JSX all run on the reconciler drawing the rest of the app. Never bundle or vendor a copy of React into an extension: a second React means a second hooks dispatcher, and the component will fail to render. OpenTUI elements (box, text, scrollbox, ...) are plain intrinsic elements and need no import.

The component receives fresh props as the app changes:

Prop	What it is
files	the visible reviewed files, review-stream order, filtered, frozen views (each carries changeType, statsTruncated, and hunks summaries beside the usual file fields)
selectedFileId	the selected file, or null
selectedHunkIndex	the selected hunk within that file, or null
placement	the accepted terminal edge
width	exact terminal columns in the host-owned rectangle
height	exact terminal rows in the host-owned rectangle
currentLine	opaque selected-row painter when the registration opts in, otherwise null
theme	hex color tokens from the active theme, updated on theme switch
keybindings	the current command bindings, resolved from defaults and the user's [keybindings] table
actions	navigation and notifications the pane may trigger

API-v3 sidebar names remain as deprecated aliases: use registerPane, ExtensionPane*, ctx.panes, and replaces: "hunk:files" in new code.

actions.selectFile(fileId), actions.selectHunk(fileId, hunkIndex), and actions.revealLine(fileId, side, line) route through the same review controller as the built-in files pane and the keyboard shortcuts, so the review stream scrolls, selection updates, and the selection_changed event fires exactly as if the user had clicked a built-in row. actions.notify(message, type?) shows a toast attributed to your extension. An action given a file id that is not currently visible is refused with a warning rather than corrupting the selection. A pane's actions carry the same navigation methods a command handler's ctx.navigation does, with the same guarantees.

The three hunk surfaces line up by design: each file's hunks lists public ExtensionDiffHunk summaries (index, the @@ header, inclusive old/new line spans) in render order, selectedHunkIndex reports the same index, and actions.selectHunk(fileId, hunkIndex) accepts it. That is everything a hunk checklist, a per-hunk progress view, or an agent-annotation navigator needs — match an annotation's oldRange/newRange against the summaries' spans to find its hunk — without touching the opaque metadata.

A component that owns a key event should ask the injected keybindings manager about a command id, rather than hard-coding the command's default chord. Like Pi's injected KeybindingsManager, this keeps local component behavior synchronized with the user's remaps and unbindings:

import type { ExtensionKeyEvent, ExtensionPaneProps } from "hunkdiff/extension";

export function handlePaneKey(props: ExtensionPaneProps, key: ExtensionKeyEvent) {
  const nextFile = props.files[1];
  if (nextFile && props.keybindings.matches(key, "hunk.review.nextFile")) {
    // The user may have remapped this from `.` to another chord.
    props.actions.selectFile(nextFile.id);
  }
}

keybindings.getKeys(commandId) returns the current chord list for a label or hint; unknown and unbound commands return an empty list. matches(key, commandId) returns false for those commands too. The manager includes both Hunk commands and extension commands under their documented ids, and its key event argument is structural — OpenTUI's KeyEvent works directly.

matchesKey, parseKeyChord, and matchesKeyChord remain exported for extension-local keys that intentionally are not commands. Prefer a named command whenever a shortcut should be user-remappable.

Hunk owns pane geometry, dividers, and responsive omission. Render failures are contained to that pane; a failed hunk:files replacement restores file navigation.

Props carry the pane's exact width and height. Use a <scrollbox> ref for scroll position and selection following; Hunk serves the matching @opentui/core instance to extensions.

Scrolling: the scrollbox ref contract

The one behavior a list pane always ends up needing is following the selection. Give your rows stable id props, hold a ref to the scrollbox, and scroll the selected row into view from an effect:

import { useEffect, useRef } from "react";
import type { ScrollBoxRenderable } from "@opentui/core";
import type { ExtensionPaneProps } from "hunkdiff/extension";

function HunkList({
  files,
  selectedFileId,
  selectedHunkIndex,
  theme,
  actions,
}: ExtensionPaneProps) {
  const scrollRef = useRef<ScrollBoxRenderable | null>(null);

  // Follow policy is deliberately yours: the host never scrolls a pane it
  // cannot see into, so decide here when (and whether) to follow.
  useEffect(() => {
    if (selectedFileId !== null) {
      scrollRef.current?.scrollChildIntoView(`row-${selectedFileId}-${selectedHunkIndex ?? 0}`);
    }
  }, [selectedFileId, selectedHunkIndex]);

  return (
    <scrollbox ref={scrollRef} width="100%" height="100%" scrollY={true} focused={false}>
      {files.flatMap((file) =>
        (file.hunks ?? []).map((hunk) => {
          const selected = file.id === selectedFileId && hunk.index === selectedHunkIndex;
          return (
            <box
              key={`${file.id}:${hunk.index}`}
              id={`row-${file.id}-${hunk.index}`}
              style={{ width: "100%", height: 1 }}
              onMouseUp={() => actions.selectHunk(file.id, hunk.index)}
            >
              <text
                content={` ${file.path}  ${hunk.header}`}
                style={{ fg: selected ? theme.accent : theme.text }}
              />
            </box>
          );
        }),
      )}
    </scrollbox>
  );
}

The ref surface this recipe stands on is the exact one the built-in files pane runs on:

• scrollChildIntoView(id) scrolls the descendant with that id prop into view.
• scrollTop and viewport.height read the current scroll offset and the scrollbox's live viewport rows. A read before the first layout pass reports 0, so viewport-dependent code belongs behind the events below rather than a bare mount effect.
• verticalScrollBar.on("change", handler), viewport.on("layout-changed", handler), and viewport.on("resized", handler) report scrolling and pane resizes; unsubscribe with the matching .off in your effect's cleanup.

That is enough to window a long list yourself: the built-in files pane renders only the rows near the viewport, plus spacer boxes sized from those same reads (its render-window helper is host code, but nothing it computes needs anything beyond this surface — useTerminalDimensions from @opentui/react serves as its pre-first-layout viewport estimate).

One honest caveat: this contract rides on OpenTUI's renderable API, served at whatever version Hunk pins — a wider surface than hunkdiff/extension itself. The built-in files pane uses the same calls, so changes that break this contract break Hunk first. Keep scroll handling small and behind your own helpers.

Its implementation lives in src/extensions/default/ui/sidebar/ and serves as the reference for third-party panes.

Pane state from events

Lifecycle handlers run outside React, but a pane component only rerenders when React sees a change. The recipe that connects them is a module-local store read through useSyncExternalStore: the event handler updates the store, and any mounted component subscribed to it rerenders — while the store keeps accumulating even when the pane is closed.

import { useSyncExternalStore } from "react";
import type { HunkExtensionAPI } from "hunkdiff/extension";

let viewedPaths: ReadonlySet<string> = new Set();
const listeners = new Set<() => void>();

function markViewed(path: string) {
  if (viewedPaths.has(path)) return;
  viewedPaths = new Set(viewedPaths).add(path); // new reference, so React sees the change
  for (const listener of listeners) listener();
}

function useViewedPaths() {
  return useSyncExternalStore(
    (listener) => {
      listeners.add(listener);
      return () => listeners.delete(listener);
    },
    () => viewedPaths,
  );
}

function ViewedCount() {
  const viewed = useViewedPaths();
  return <text content={`${viewed.size} files viewed`} />;
}

export default function (hunk: HunkExtensionAPI) {
  hunk.on("file_viewed", ({ file }) => markViewed(file.path));
  hunk.registerPane({ id: "progress", component: ViewedCount });
}

Snapshots must be immutable — replace the set instead of mutating it, so useSyncExternalStore can compare references. Storing state in a hook inside the component instead would lose it every time the pane closes and unmounts.

hunk.registerFileView(view) (experimental)

A file view is an alternate host-rendered presentation of one file in the same top-to-bottom review stream. It is not a whole-file React component: Hunk owns row measurement, scrolling/windowing, hunk navigation, and fallback to Pierre's raw diff. A constrained, experimental fixed-height JSX row POC lets individual validated rows paint OpenTUI content without taking over that geometry. Raw is always the default; users select a matching view from View for the selected file. Rows may bind themselves to exact old/new source ranges so Hunk can insert its own inline review-note cards without giving the extension note contents or geometry.

The installable examples/extensions/rendered-markdown/ uses this contract for a parsed Markdown preview. It is intentionally not bundled or loaded by default; copy the folder into ~/.config/hunk/extensions/, install its dependency there, and its View entry and F8 command become available.

import type { HunkExtensionAPI } from "hunkdiff/extension";

export default function (hunk: HunkExtensionAPI) {
  hunk.registerFileView({
    id: "plain-markdown",
    title: "Plain Markdown",
    matches: (file) => file.path.endsWith(".md"),
    async layout(input) {
      const document = await input.readDocument("new");
      if (!document || document.length > 100_000) return null;

      const sourceLines = (document.endsWith("\n") ? document.slice(0, -1) : document).split("\n");
      const rows = sourceLines.map((text, index) => ({
        id: `line:${index + 1}`,
        spans: [{ text: text || " " }],
        sourceRanges: [{ side: "new" as const, range: [index + 1, index + 1] as const }],
      }));
      if (rows.length === 0) return null;

      return {
        rows,
        hunkRows: (input.file.hunks ?? []).map((hunk) => ({
          startRow: Math.max(0, (hunk.newRange?.[0] ?? 1) - 1),
          endRow: Math.min(rows.length - 1, (hunk.newRange?.[1] ?? 1) - 1),
        })),
      };
    },
  });
}

layout receives one readonly input containing file, width, signal, changes, and readDocument. input.file is the same frozen public ExtensionDiffFile panes receive. input.changes exposes typed added and removed ranges without Pierre metadata; complete old/new hunk ranges remain available through input.file.hunks. readDocument("old" | "new") is lazy and cached by Hunk; it resolves exact text or null when that side is absent, unavailable, too large, or fails to load. Never treat null as an exception: return null from layout to keep raw diff active.

Layouts use an omitted tone for ordinary text and generic symbolic tones (muted, accent, accent-muted, syntax, added, removed) plus optional terminal attributes (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough). Hunk resolves those primitives only while painting, so the host does not learn the extension's content format and measurement remains theme-independent. Every parsed hunk needs one in-bounds, inclusive hunkRows entry at the same array position as input.file.hunks.

A row's optional sourceRanges contains inclusive, one-based exact-source bindings such as { side: "new", range: [12, 18] }. Hunk reads only the bound source sides, verifies every range is in bounds, rejects overlapping ranges on the same side across rows, and requires each bound row to belong to exactly one hunkRows extent. One source line and one bound row therefore resolve to one presentation/hunk target. Inline notes anchor by their existing preferred-side start line and are inserted before the bound row. Placement is all-or-raw per file: if any visible note is range-less or unbound, Hunk temporarily renders the complete raw diff rather than guessing or dropping review data. The stored presentation selection returns when the note layer is hidden or the mapping becomes resolvable. Draft note editing remains raw-only.

Invalid, oversized, cancelled, or throwing layouts are isolated with one warning per concrete extension registration and fall back to raw diff. Rapid width changes are coalesced, and Hunk never paints geometry measured for a stale width. An experimental custom row keeps symbolic fallback spans and declares its fixed painter atomically as component: { height, render }. Painter props include the same curated semantic theme palette as custom panes. It updates live at paint time without entering layout or changing deterministic geometry. If painting fails, the fallback spans are clipped to that same declared height rather than changing stream geometry. Custom rows are non-focusable paint surfaces: registered commands are their supported keyboard path. A cooperatively delivered, handled left-button mouse-up may act and stop propagation, while wheel, drag, and unhandled input remain host-owned. Hunk makes no portal, renderer, focus, or input-delivery guarantee; see the linked JSX POC for state lifetime, clipping, and error boundaries. The opt-in jsx-file-view-gallery runs fixed JSX rows against checked-in TypeScript, CSS, and package dependency diffs.

A command handler can control the selected file's view through ctx.fileViews.select("view-id"), toggle("view-id"), and isActive("view-id"); pass null to select to restore raw rendering. Bare ids address the calling extension; use "other-extension:view-id" to address another registered view. The public command API remains current-file only. When the current file already uses an alternate presentation, View → Apply “…” to all matching files applies it to every file in the complete changeset that passes that view's matches function, including files hidden by the current filter. Nonmatches retain their existing choices, and host constraints such as an active draft may temporarily keep a selected file raw.

ctx.fileViews.refresh("view-id") invalidates that view's prepared layouts. Hunk treats layout as a pure derivation of (file, width) and reuses a prepared result until one of those changes, so a view holding its own state — a fold, a toggled overlay, a display mode — has nothing to change and would otherwise keep painting its first answer. Flip the state, then ask for the re-derivation:

import type { HunkExtensionAPI } from "hunkdiff/extension";

export default function (hunk: HunkExtensionAPI) {
  let expanded = false;

  hunk.registerFileView({
    id: "outline",
    title: "Outline",
    matches: (file) => file.path.endsWith(".ts"),
    layout: ({ file }) => ({
      rows: (file.hunks ?? []).map((entry) => ({
        id: `hunk:${entry.index}`,
        spans: [{ text: expanded ? `Hunk ${entry.index + 1} · ${entry.header}` : entry.header }],
      })),
      hunkRows: (file.hunks ?? []).map((entry) => ({ startRow: entry.index, endRow: entry.index })),
    }),
  });

  hunk.registerCommand(
    { id: "toggle-detail", title: "Toggle outline detail", key: "f9" },
    (ctx) => {
      expanded = !expanded;
      ctx.fileViews.refresh("outline");
    },
  );
}

Refresh defaults to view-wide, not current-file: every file presenting the view re-runs matches and layout, while files on raw diff or on another view do no work. The rows already on screen stay there until their replacement resolves, so a refresh never flashes back to raw diff mid-flight; a re-layout that declines, throws, or times out falls back to raw exactly like any other failed layout. Unknown ids warn and do nothing, and ids resolve the same way select resolves them.

When the state that changed belongs to one file rather than the whole view — a fold, a per-file edit buffer — scope the invalidation with { fileId } so the other files presenting the view keep their prepared rows:

const folded = new Map<string, boolean>();

hunk.registerCommand({ id: "fold", title: "Fold this file", key: "f10" }, (ctx) => {
  const fileId = ctx.selection.file?.id;
  if (!fileId) return;
  folded.set(fileId, !folded.get(fileId));
  ctx.fileViews.refresh("outline", { fileId });
});

That matters because View → Apply “…” to all matching files can leave one view presenting every matching file in the changeset, and each of those files would otherwise re-run third-party layout for a change only one of them made. A fileId no reviewed file carries invalidates nothing and warns about nothing, since ids can race a reload.

Interactive file views

Add a mode when a file view needs keyboard input. Hunk sends it keys after focused inputs and dialogs, but before app commands.

let showPath = true;

hunk.registerFileView({
  id: "outline",
  title: "Outline",
  matches: () => true,
  layout: ({ file }) => ({
    rows: [{ id: "summary", spans: [{ text: showPath ? file.path : "Outline" }] }],
    hunkRows: [],
  }),
  mode: {
    onKey: (key, ctx) => {
      if (key.name !== "space") return "pass";
      showPath = !showPath;
      ctx.fileViews.refresh("outline");
      return "handled";
    },
  },
});

hunk.registerCommand({ id: "outline-keys", title: "Outline keys", key: "f9" }, (ctx) => {
  ctx.fileViews.enterMode("outline");
});

enterMode(viewId) selects the view and starts its mode, returning false if it cannot. Only one file-view mode runs at a time. exitMode() stops it; isModeActive(viewId) checks it.

onKey must return synchronously:

• "handled" consumes the key.
• "pass" continues through any active session keyboard mode, then Hunk's commands and focused scrolling.
• "exit" consumes the key and stops the mode.

When the file-view mode is the highest-priority input owner, Escape exits it and never reaches onKey. Hunk also exits when the selected file, active presentation, extensions, or review session changes. Optional onEnter and onExit lifecycle callbacks must also return synchronously, and onExit runs exactly once per activation. A failing or asynchronous onEnter or onKey exits the mode; any callback failure warns without breaking the review.

hunk.registerLineHighlighter(highlighter)

A line highlighter marks character ranges inside Hunk's own diff rendering — syntax highlighting, word diff, and layout stay exactly as they are, and the marked characters get a resolved background. It is the lever for search hits, diagnostics mapped onto changed lines, secret scanning, coverage, and anything else that wants to say “these exact characters, here.” For a whole alternate presentation, use registerFileView instead.

import type { ExtensionLineHighlight, HunkExtensionAPI } from "hunkdiff/extension";

export default function (hunk: HunkExtensionAPI) {
  hunk.registerLineHighlighter({
    id: "todos",
    highlight({ file }) {
      const marks: ExtensionLineHighlight[] = [];
      let newLine = 0;
      for (const raw of file.patch.split("\n")) {
        const header = /^@@ -\d+(?:,\d+)? \+(\d+)/.exec(raw);
        if (header) {
          newLine = Number(header[1]);
          continue;
        }
        if (newLine === 0 || raw.startsWith("-")) continue;
        const start = raw.slice(1).indexOf("TODO");
        if (start !== -1) {
          marks.push({ side: "new", line: newLine, range: [start, start + 4], tone: "warning" });
        }
        newLine += 1;
      }
      return marks;
    },
  });
}

Marks are addressed by source coordinates, never by rendered rows: side ("old" or "new"), a 1-based line on that side, and a [start, end) range in UTF-16 code units of the line's raw text — exactly what indexOf and RegExp.exec return against file.patch lines or a readDocument result. That addressing survives split vs stack layout, line wrapping, horizontal scrolling, and collapsed-context expansion, and the extension never learns Hunk's row model. A context line may be addressed through either side's line number; split view mirrors the mark onto both halves of the row. Offsets that land inside an emoji or a wide character widen outward to the whole glyph. A mark paints terminal columns, so a range covering only characters that occupy no column — bidi controls, zero-width spaces and joiners — paints nothing.

The tone says what a mark means — "match" (the default), "current" for the one hit a search is standing on, "info", "warning", or "error". Tones exist because a color would be the extension's problem to get right and it cannot be: a fixed background that reads on a context line is invisible on an added line's green. Hunk resolves each tinted tone against the actual background of each marked line until it clears a minimum perceptual distance — stronger than its own word-diff emphasis, backing off only before the code on top would stop being readable — per theme, so a mark is never invisible on a line kind or a theme. On a transparent cell there is no color to blend against, so resolution falls back to the theme background and then to the appearance's own extreme: the mark still paints, chosen against the surface Hunk assumes rather than the one behind the terminal. "current" renders as reverse video (theme text as the block, theme background as the glyphs), the convention less and vim use for the active hit.

highlight({ file, signal, readDocument }) may be sync or async, and returns the complete set of marks for one file — or null for none. Hunk calls it per reviewed file, bounded by the same timeout and concurrency discipline as file views, and treats the result as a pure derivation of the file plus an invalidation epoch: results are cached until ctx.highlights.refresh bumps the epoch or the review reloads. A search that moves to the next match flips its own state and refreshes rather than pushing marks into the host:

hunk.registerCommand({ id: "next", title: "Next match", key: "f9" }, (ctx) => {
  ctx.highlights.refresh("todos");
});

Refresh defaults to highlighter-wide; pass { fileId } to re-derive one file's marks and leave the rest untouched. Bare ids address the calling extension's own highlighter, "other-extension:highlighter-id" addresses any registered one, unknown ids warn and do nothing, and a fileId no reviewed file carries invalidates nothing — ids can race a reload. The same controls are available to session keyboard modes through their context, so a prompt's submit can refresh marks directly.

Containment matches the rest of the system. Marks addressing lines the review is not showing — inside a collapsed gap, absent from a partial patch — are silently invisible rather than errors; expanding a gap reveals marks addressed into it when the file's source is loaded. Structurally invalid entries are dropped with one warning per file; a raw result longer than 10,000 entries, or one larger than 2,000 ranges per file or 100 per line, is rejected whole rather than truncated silently; a highlighter whose marks would push one file past 4,000 merged ranges across every highlighter is dropped for that file; overlapping ranges resolve deterministically with the later range winning. A throwing, rejecting, or timed-out highlight costs that file's marks from that highlighter and nothing else. Because highlights are paint-only — they change colors, never text or geometry — the failure mode is always “no marks,” never a broken review. Highlights render in interactive sessions only; the static pager fallback never runs extension code.

Session keyboard modes

Register a session-wide mode when an extension needs to interpret review keys without replacing a pane or exposing renderer internals. Registration is inert; a command deliberately enters the mode through its own scoped controls:

let pending = "";

hunk.registerKeyboardMode({
  id: "normal",
  title: "Vim navigation",
  onEnter: () => {
    pending = "";
  },
  onExit: () => {
    pending = "";
  },
  onKey: (key, ctx) => {
    if (key.sequence === "g") {
      if (pending === "g") {
        pending = "";
        ctx.commands.execute("hunk.review.jumpToTop");
      } else {
        pending = "g";
      }
      return "handled";
    }

    pending = "";
    if (key.sequence !== "j") return "pass";
    ctx.commands.execute("hunk.review.stepDown");
    return "handled";
  },
});

hunk.registerCommand({ id: "vim", title: "Toggle Vim navigation", key: "ctrl+v" }, (ctx) => {
  if (ctx.keyboardModes.isActive("normal")) {
    ctx.keyboardModes.exitMode();
  } else {
    ctx.keyboardModes.enterMode("normal");
  }
});

ctx.keyboardModes.enterMode(id) resolves only a mode registered by the same extension. exitMode() and isActive(id?) likewise act only on that extension's active mode, so one extension cannot inspect or stop another. Entering a mode replaces the previous session mode and runs its onExit first. While onEnter or onExit runs, enterMode() and exitMode() return false; lifecycle callbacks reset extension-owned state but cannot change keyboard ownership. Only one session keyboard mode runs at a time.

onKey returns synchronously:

• "handled" consumes the key.
• "pass" continues through ordinary Hunk commands and focused scrolling.
• "exit" consumes the key and leaves the mode.

The context is intentionally small: cwd, notify, live public commands, activation-scoped keyboardModes, and highlights (so a prompt's submit can refresh line marks directly). Keys are frozen plain snapshots, not OpenTUI events. Async/throwing callbacks are contained and exit safely. When the session mode is the highest-priority active input owner, host-owned Escape exits without reaching onKey; the status badge and a host-owned Extensions menu item are clickable exits too. Controls handed to a mode are activation-scoped: after that activation exits, retained callbacks cannot inspect, stop, or replace a later mode. An active onKey may deliberately enter another mode from the same extension; its outgoing lifecycle callback cannot supersede that replacement.

Dialogs, menus, focused filter/note inputs, and interactive file-view modes run before a session mode. A file-view mode may temporarily overlap it: the first Escape leaves the focused file-view mode, and the second leaves the resumed session mode. Ordinary content soft reloads preserve a session mode, while an extension reload, registry closure, or App teardown exits it exactly once.

Multi-key grammar and numeric prefixes belong to the extension. Resolve a count, then call ctx.commands.execute(id, { count }) once so the host applies movement atomically. See the dependency-free vim-navigation example for j/k, gg/G, hunk movement, alignment, capped counts, Ctrl chords, and a focused : command line composed from a registered command plus ctx.dialogs.input().

hunk.registerCommand(command, handler)

Register a named command, optionally bound to a key. Commands share Hunk's built-in dispatch table, with built-ins taking precedence.

import type { HunkExtensionAPI } from "hunkdiff/extension";

export default function (hunk: HunkExtensionAPI) {
  hunk.registerCommand({ id: "hello", title: "Say hello", key: "ctrl+g" }, (ctx) => {
    ctx.notify("hello from a command");
  });
}

Key chords are ctrl, alt/option, cmd/meta, and shift joined with + around a base key — a character ("y", "["), an uppercase letter for its shifted form ("G"), or a named key ("f2", "pageup", "left"). shift applies to letters and named keys only: for a shifted symbol or digit, bind the character the shift produces ("!", not "shift+1"), since terminals report the character rather than the combination. ctrl+<letter> also matches an unnamed bare control byte; named Tab and Enter events stay distinct. An unparsable chord fails registration. A chord already owned by a built-in or an earlier extension stays with its owner and produces a warning. Omit key to register a command with no binding.

key also takes a list, binding the command to every chord in it:

hunk.registerCommand({ id: "hello", title: "Say hello", key: ["ctrl+g", "f9"] }, (ctx) => {
  ctx.notify("hello from a command");
});

Chords are refused one at a time: if ctrl+g were already taken, the command would still answer to f9.

Whatever an extension declares is a default. Users remap commands by id in the [keybindings] table of their own config, extension commands included — yours is named "<extensionId>.<commandId>", while Hunk's own are "hunk.app.quit" and friends. See docs/keybindings.md for the rules; the practical consequence is that a chord you declare may not be the chord your command ends up on.

Every registered command is also listed in the menu bar's Extensions menu, under its title, showing whichever key it currently answers to. The menu appears only when something registered a command, entries are grouped by extension in load order, and running one from the menu is the same dispatch the key would have done — so a command with no key, or one whose chord was refused, is still reachable with the mouse.

The handler fires when the key is pressed outside modal UI — dialogs, menus, and focused text inputs own their keys first. It receives the standard context plus ctx.panes, the controls for opening panes:

• ctx.panes.open(paneId) / close(paneId) / toggle(paneId) — a bare id names your own extension's pane, while a fully qualified "<extensionId>:<paneId>" key addresses any registered pane. Use "hunk:files" for the literal built-in pane. These controls address registrations directly; they do not resolve a replacement slot. To toggle whichever pane currently owns the files role, call ctx.commands.execute("hunk.view.toggleFilesPane"). Opening a left/right pane also reveals the sidebar area when responsive layout has hidden it; top/bottom pane state is independent of that area.
• ctx.panes.isOpen(paneId) reports the logical open preference, including while availability or terminal bounds temporarily omit the pane.

ctx.selection is where the review was pointing when the command fired — the same selection a pane component sees in its props, so a command never has to track selection_changed itself to know what the user is looking at:

hunk.registerCommand(
  { id: "show-selection", title: "Show the selected file", key: "ctrl+y" },
  (ctx) => {
    const { file, hunkIndex } = ctx.selection;
    if (!file) {
      ctx.notify("No file selected");
      return;
    }

    ctx.notify(hunkIndex === null ? file.path : `${file.path} — hunk ${hunkIndex + 1}`);
  },
);

selection.file is a frozen read-only view, identical to the entries in a pane's files prop. Extensions only receive visible files, so it is null when filtering hides the selected file or when no files are visible. selection.hunkIndex is that file's selected hunk, and null whenever file is — or when the file has no hunks to select. selection.currentLine is the one-based { side, line } source address carrying the current-line marker, or null when the marker is off or the review has not settled on a rendered line. It belongs to this file and hunk, uses Hunk's canonical new-side address for a context row, and can be passed directly to navigation.revealLine. The values are captured when the command fires: a handler that awaits still sees the selection it was run from, not wherever the user navigated to meanwhile.

ctx.commands invokes Hunk's documented semantic commands through the exact same live command table used by the keyboard, menus, and help:

hunk.registerCommand({ id: "skip-three", title: "Skip three hunks", key: "ctrl+j" }, (ctx) => {
  if (ctx.commands.isEnabled("hunk.review.nextHunk")) {
    ctx.commands.execute("hunk.review.nextHunk", { count: 3 });
  }
});

Only explicitly public built-in hunk.* commands can be invoked. Unknown, disabled, extension-owned, or stale-session commands return false; an extension cannot recursively invoke itself or another extension. isEnabled also returns false for malformed ids, while malformed execute ids, options, and counts throw as extension programming errors. The public ids are the built-ins listed in keybindings, including the unbound hunk.review.alignCurrentLineTop, hunk.review.alignCurrentLineCenter, and hunk.review.alignCurrentLineBottom commands.

count defaults to 1 and must be a positive safe integer no greater than 10,000. Relative line, viewport, horizontal, file, hunk, and annotated navigation applies the count atomically in one host transition. Absolute positioning and one-shot commands run once. This avoids stale React state without exposing scroll boxes, renderer refs, or coordinates. Both methods read live command state, so they remain valid after an await or an ordinary content soft reload that retains the extension registry. Controls retained across an extension-registry reload or App remount return false.

ctx.keyboardModes enters, exits, or probes the command's own registered session keyboard modes. See Session keyboard modes.

ctx.highlights refreshes prepared line-highlight marks, whole or { fileId }-scoped. See hunk.registerLineHighlighter.

Navigating the review

ctx.navigation moves the review stream: selectFile(fileId), selectHunk(fileId, hunkIndex), and revealLine(fileId, side, line), the same guarded navigation a pane's actions carry, routed through the same review controller — the stream scrolls, selection updates, and selection_changed fires exactly as if the user had clicked a pane row. Unlike selection it is live, not a snapshot: a call acts on the review as it is at that moment, so a handler that awaits a dialog and then navigates still works. A file id the stream cannot currently show is refused with a warning rather than corrupting the selection, and a hunk index is clamped into the file's real range.

revealLine is the finest target there is, and the one to reach for when your extension knows exactly which line it means — a search hit, a lint finding, the line a mark from registerLineHighlighter sits on. A hunk hundreds of lines tall has one anchor, so selectHunk can leave the line you meant pages below the viewport; revealLine scrolls to the line itself, lands it a little below the viewport top like every other Hunk reveal, and makes it the current line so the reverse-video marker sits on it.

line is 1-based on side as the patch numbers it, so a context line answers to either side's number. Two things soften the target rather than failing it: when no rendered row carries that line — it is inside a collapsed gap, absent from a partial patch, or the reviewer turned the current-line marker off (view.cursor_line = "off") — the jump lands on the hunk containing the line instead. Only a line no hunk of the file covers is refused, with a warning naming your extension, and so are a side outside "old"/"new" and a line number that is not a positive whole number.

hunk.registerCommand({ id: "first-todo", title: "Jump to the first TODO" }, async (ctx) => {
  const file = ctx.selection.file;
  if (!file) {
    return;
  }

  const document = await ctx.workspace.readDocument(file.id, "new");
  const index = (document ?? "").split("\n").findIndex((line) => line.includes("TODO"));
  if (index >= 0) {
    ctx.navigation.revealLine(file.id, "new", index + 1);
  }
});

A handler may be async; a failure (sync or rejected) becomes a warning naming your extension.

Asking the user

ctx.dialogs puts a question on screen and waits for the answer. Three shapes, all promise-returning:

• confirm({ title, body?, confirmLabel?, cancelLabel? }) → true or false
• select({ title, options }) → the chosen string, or null
• input({ title, placeholder?, initial? }) → the typed string, or null

hunk.registerCommand(
  { id: "reformat", title: "Reformat the selected file", key: "ctrl+r" },
  async (ctx) => {
    const file = ctx.selection.file;
    if (!file) {
      return;
    }

    const proceed = await ctx.dialogs.confirm({
      title: `Reformat ${file.path}?`,
      body: "The file is rewritten in place.",
      confirmLabel: "reformat",
    });

    ctx.notify(proceed ? `Reformatting ${file.path}` : "Left it alone");
  },
);

select is the natural fit for acting on part of the selection — here, asking which hunk of the selected file to jump to, then navigating there:

hunk.registerCommand({ id: "pick-hunk", title: "Pick a hunk", key: "ctrl+k" }, async (ctx) => {
  const file = ctx.selection.file;
  const hunks = file?.hunks ?? [];
  if (!file || hunks.length === 0) {
    ctx.notify("Nothing to pick from", "warning");
    return;
  }

  const labels = hunks.map((hunk) => hunk.header || `hunk ${hunk.index + 1}`);
  const picked = await ctx.dialogs.select({ title: "Which hunk?", options: labels });

  // `navigation` is live, so the jump is valid even after awaiting the dialog.
  if (picked !== null) {
    ctx.navigation.selectHunk(file.id, labels.indexOf(picked));
  }
});

Hunk draws the dialog, not you: your text fills the title, body, and choices, and dialogs from installed extensions carry an ext <your-id> attribution line — the same marker notify toasts use — so a third-party prompt can never present itself as Hunk asking. Hunk's own bundled extensions omit that redundant marker.

One dialog is on screen at a time. Concurrent requests queue in call order, across extensions too, so a second question waits its turn instead of replacing the first. While a dialog is up it owns the keyboard: Escape cancels (false, or null), Enter accepts — the confirm action, the highlighted option, or the typed text — and review shortcuts stay suppressed underneath. Confirm dialogs also answer to y/n, select dialogs to ↑/↓, and every dialog's actions and rows are clickable.

Two things resolve a dialog without the user: the session moving on, and bad arguments. A session reload — the refresh key, a watch-triggered reload, an agent command — cancels open and queued dialogs, since the review they asked about is being replaced; a dialog pending at shutdown resolves its cancel value the same way, and a request made after that point cancels immediately. A blank title, or a select with no options, is a bug in the extension rather than an answer from the user, so the promise rejects; like any other handler failure, that surfaces as a warning naming your extension.

Workspace documents

ctx.workspace reads full documents from the current review and can replace an eligible working-tree file.

Method	Result
readDocument(fileId, "old" | "new")	The reviewed source text, or null
canWriteDocument(fileId)	Whether the review and file allow writes
writeDocument({ fileId, text })	{ ok: true } or { ok: false, reason, detail }

A command can read, transform, and write a selected file:

hunk.registerCommand({ id: "shout-headings", title: "Shout headings", key: "f7" }, async (ctx) => {
  const file = ctx.selection.file;
  if (!file || !ctx.workspace.canWriteDocument(file.id)) return;

  const current = await ctx.workspace.readDocument(file.id, "new");
  if (current === null) return;

  const result = await ctx.workspace.writeDocument({
    fileId: file.id,
    text: current.replace(/^(#+ .+)$/gm, (heading) => heading.toUpperCase()),
  });

  if (!result.ok && result.reason !== "cancelled") {
    ctx.notify(result.detail, "warning");
  }
});

readDocument returns the exact source represented by the review, not the file's patch. It works for every review kind. For example, the "new" side in hunk show HEAD is the file at that commit, not the working-tree file. It returns null when the file or side is absent, no source is available, reading fails, or the document exceeds Hunk's size limit. Reads never prompt. An invalid side rejects the promise.

Writes require all of the following:

• an unstaged working-tree review (hunk diff with no revision range)
• a reloadable session; --agent-context - sessions cannot write
• a reviewed file with writable new-side text
• a regular target inside the review root

Revision, stash, range, staged, patch, and file-pair reviews are read-only. Deleted, binary, oversized, missing, symlinked, and root-escaping targets are also refused. Targets are identified by reviewed file id, never by an arbitrary path.

canWriteDocument checks the review and file policy without prompting or inspecting the filesystem. A later writeDocument can still refuse if the file has moved or become unsafe.

writeDocument verifies the target, asks for consent through the attributed ctx.dialogs queue, then verifies it again before writing. The second check prevents deletion and symlink-swap races while the dialog is open. Authority is checked immediately before the filesystem call; once that irreversible write starts, its actual success or failure wins even if another reload happens, and graceful shutdown waits for it to settle. A successful write queues reconciliation of the review then active, and the write promise may settle before that reload finishes.

A declined prompt returns cancelled, an ineligible or unsafe target returns unavailable, and an attempted write failure returns failed with a displayable detail. Malformed requests reject the promise.

hunk.transformChangeset(fn)

Rewrite the loaded changeset before it reaches the review UI. Transforms run in registration order, each seeing the previous one's output, on first load and on every reload.

hunk.transformChangeset((changeset) => ({
  ...changeset,
  files: changeset.files.filter((file) => !file.path.endsWith(".lock")),
}));

The function may be async. Filtering and reordering files is fully supported — the panes and review stream both follow whatever you return.

Each file carries an opaque metadata field: it is the parsed diff the renderer draws from, so pass it through untouched (spreading a file preserves it). What you return is validated before it is reviewed. A transform that throws, or returns something the review UI could not draw — not a changeset with a files array, a file missing metadata.hunks or stats, two files sharing an id — is skipped: the previous changeset carries forward and you get a warning naming your extension and the problem.

You never need to reach into metadata to know what a file's hunks are: the read-only views Hunk hands outward (event payloads, pane props, a command's selection) carry a hunks list of public summaries — index, the @@ header, and the inclusive old/new line spans, in render order. Like changeType, it is derived from the metadata at that boundary, so a transform neither receives nor produces it, and a stale value spread through a transform is replaced with what the metadata actually parses to.

hunk.on(event, handler)

Subscribe to a lifecycle or UI event. Handlers may be async; Hunk never blocks the UI waiting for one. Alongside cwd and notify, every handler receives ctx.panes, live ctx.navigation, and attributed ctx.dialogs, the same controls command handlers receive. ctx.sidebars is a deprecated alias for ctx.panes. That means a startup handler can present one focused welcome question and navigate to its first example, while a changeset_loaded handler can reveal a pane when it finds something worth showing — no keypress required. Dialog calls made before the mounted app is ready resolve to their cancel value with a warning rather than opening later. Controls retained across a review or extension-registry replacement expire: navigation and pane mutations warn and do nothing, dialogs resolve to their normal cancel value, and workspace reads or not-yet-started writes return null/unavailable instead of acting on replacement content. Once a consented filesystem write starts, it reports its actual outcome and success reconciles the review then active.

Event	Payload	When
startup	{ cwd }	once per loaded instance, after its review UI mounts
changeset_loaded	{ changeset }	first load and every reload
command_executed	{ commandId }	after a named command dispatches in this terminal host
selection_changed	{ fileId, hunkIndex }	when the review selection settles (debounced ~150ms)
file_viewed	{ file, hunkIndex }	when selection settles on a file or a reload replaces it
filter_changed	{ filter }	whenever the file-filter query changes
theme_changed	{ themeId }	when the user commits a new theme
layout_changed	{ mode, layout }	mode or responsive split/stack layout changes
watch_reload_pending	{}	watcher observed a change before its reload check
note_created	{ note }	a user saves an inline review note
note_edited	{ note }	an in-progress inline note's body changes
session_reload	{ changeset, reason }	on every session reload
shutdown	{}	before instance replacement or exit, with a short timeout

A newly mounted extension instance receives startup before its first changeset_loaded; reloads then deliver changeset_loaded before session_reload once the matching review generation has committed.

selection_changed is trailing-debounced on purpose: holding [/] retargets the selection many times a second, and handlers only care where the user landed. fileId and hunkIndex are null when nothing is selected.

command_executed reports the stable canonical command id after the terminal dispatcher invokes it, whether the user reached it through a key, a menu, an old command alias, or ctx.commands.execute. Extension commands may still have detached async work in flight; this event observes the accepted user action, not promise settlement. Listen for ids rather than key chords so behavior follows the user's live [keybindings] table. Browser/session actions lower to shared review intents rather than terminal commands and do not emit this event. Modal widget keys such as Escape, Enter, note-editor Ctrl-S, and F10 menu navigation are also not commands.

session_reload's reason is "watch" (the watcher saw the source change), "daemon" (an agent command through the session broker), or "manual" (the refresh key, or the reload after granting extension trust).

note_created and note_edited cover notes authored in Hunk's own UI, in this session. Review notes are session-local state, so there is no backlog to replay on startup — but comments added through agent session commands do not emit these events, and a session_reload may remap or drop notes without one either. A list accumulated from these events is therefore "notes the user saved here this session", not a complete review record; present it as such.

shutdown handlers get a short window (250ms) to finish before Hunk replaces the extension registry or exits anyway, so make cleanup prompt and idempotent. Host-mediated UI authority is already revoked when shutdown begins: use the event to release extension-owned resources, not to navigate or open dialogs. The replacement instance receives startup after its review is mounted.

hunk.events

hunk.events is a small bus shared by every loaded extension. Use it to coordinate extensions without coupling them through a command or global state. Names are open-ended, so namespace them with your extension id. Listeners get the same ctx.panes, ctx.navigation, and ctx.dialogs controls as lifecycle handlers; ctx.sidebars remains a deprecated pane alias. Delivery is fire-and-forget and one listener's failure is reported without stopping the others. Events an extension emits while factories are loading are queued until every extension has had a chance to subscribe.

import type { HunkExtensionAPI } from "hunkdiff/extension";

export default function (hunk: HunkExtensionAPI) {
  hunk.events.on<{ fileCount: number }>("summary:ready", (payload, ctx) => {
    if (payload.fileCount > 100) ctx.panes.open("summary");
  });

  hunk.on("changeset_loaded", ({ changeset }, ctx) => {
    hunk.events.emit("summary:ready", { fileCount: changeset.files.length });
    ctx.panes.open("summary");
  });
}

Bus payloads are shallow-frozen copies when they are objects. Keep nested data immutable if multiple extensions will read it.

hunk.config

Your extension's own [extension.<id>] config table, as a plain object. Hunk does not interpret the keys — unknown keys pass straight through — and repo config overrides user config key by key.

Treat these values as untrusted. Tables merge by extension id with no notion of where the extension was installed from, so a repository under review can set or override configuration for an extension you installed globally. That is deliberate — repo-level tuning of a shared extension is a normal team workflow, and Hunk shows a startup notice listing the extension ids a repo configures — but it means hunk.config must never be trusted for exec-adjacent decisions such as binary paths, shell commands, or module loading. Validate those against something the user controls.

# ~/.config/hunk/config.toml
[extension.collapse-generated]
patterns = ["*.lock", "dist/**"]

const patterns = (hunk.config.patterns as string[] | undefined) ?? ["*.lock"];

ctx.notify(message, type?)

Every handler and transform receives a context object with cwd and notify. Event and bus handlers additionally receive panes and events.emit; command handlers receive panes, selection, navigation, and dialogs. The deprecated sidebars alias remains available during the API-v4 compatibility window. notify shows a single unobtrusive line at the bottom of the app that clears itself after a few seconds; queued messages appear in turn. type is "info" (default), "warning", or "error", which selects the color. Notifications raised before the UI has mounted are buffered and flushed once it does, so a startup handler can notify safely.

hunk.log(message)

Record a diagnostic line. Logs are collected per extension rather than written to the terminal, because the TUI owns the screen.

A complete example

Installable examples include:

• pane-layout for all four placements.
• current-line-lens for opaque selected-row paint.
• review-triage for panes, commands, dialogs, lifecycle events, and the event bus.
• examples/extensions/rendered-markdown/ parses Markdown into generic host-owned file-view rows. Its README shows how to run it from the checkout or copy it into the global extensions directory.

Collapse lockfiles and generated output out of every review, and say how many files were hidden.

// ~/.config/hunk/extensions/collapse-generated.ts
import type { HunkExtensionAPI } from "hunkdiff/extension";

/** Match one path against a `*`-only glob, anchored at both ends. */
function matchesPattern(path: string, pattern: string) {
  const source = pattern
    .split("*")
    .map((part) => part.replaceAll(/[.*+?^${}()|[\]\\]/g, "\\$&"))
    .join(".*");
  return new RegExp(`^${source}$`).test(path);
}

export default function (hunk: HunkExtensionAPI) {
  const patterns = (hunk.config.patterns as string[] | undefined) ?? [
    "*.lock",
    "*-lock.json",
    "dist/*",
  ];

  hunk.transformChangeset((changeset, ctx) => {
    const kept = changeset.files.filter(
      (file) => !patterns.some((pattern) => matchesPattern(file.path, pattern)),
    );

    const hidden = changeset.files.length - kept.length;
    if (hidden > 0) {
      ctx.notify(`Collapsed ${hidden} generated ${hidden === 1 ? "file" : "files"}`);
    }

    return { ...changeset, files: kept };
  });
}

Configure it without touching the code:

# .hunk/config.toml
[extension.collapse-generated]
patterns = ["*.lock", "bun.lockb", "generated/*"]

Try it against the working tree without installing it:

hunk diff --extension ./collapse-generated.ts

CLI flags and config reference

hunk diff --extension ./path/to/entry.ts   # load one entry file (repeatable)
hunk diff --extension ./my-ext             # a folder extension: loads ./my-ext/index.ts
hunk diff --no-extensions                  # disable user extensions for this run

# ~/.config/hunk/config.toml or .hunk/config.toml
[extensions]
enabled = true                      # false disables loading for this layer
paths = ["~/dev/hunk-ext/index.ts"] # extra entry files or directories

[extension.my-extension]            # opaque payload handed to that extension
some_key = "some value"

[extensions] enabled layers like every other option: a repo .hunk/config.toml overrides your user config. --no-extensions is a hard off switch that no config layer can re-enable. Both govern user extensions only — Hunk's bundled Git, Jujutsu, and Sapling backends load either way. [extensions] paths from a repo config is trust-gated the same way .hunk/extensions is, because it is repo-controlled either way.

Not contributable yet

Menu entries, standalone keybindings (a chord contributed without a command — commands registered through registerCommand are already user-remappable via [keybindings]), custom note renderers, session commands, and CLI subcommands are not contributable yet. Commands and their default key bindings landed with registerCommand — the named-command registry the rest build on; see docs/extension-system-exploration.md for the design and phasing.