No Animal Violence — VS Code Extension

A VS Code extension that detects speciesist language in code, comments, and documentation in real time — and offers one-click Quick Fix replacements with clearer alternatives. It covers 65+ patterns: idioms that trivialize animal harm, industry euphemisms (e.g. "processing plant", "livestock"), and developer-specific terms (e.g. "cattle vs. pets", "dogfooding"). It is the IDE-level layer of a suite that enforces the same canonical rule dictionary across pre-commit hooks, CI, ESLint, PR review automation, and AI agent runtimes.

Note

This project is part of the Open Paws ecosystem — AI infrastructure for the animal liberation movement. Explore the full platform →

Quickstart

1. Install — search for "Animal Violence Language Scanner" in the VS Code Extensions panel, or install from the VS Marketplace.
2. Open any file — the extension activates immediately for all file types.
3. See violations — speciesist phrases are underlined; the Problems panel (Ctrl+Shift+M) lists each match with its suggested alternative.
4. Apply Quick Fix — place your cursor on a flagged phrase and press Ctrl+. (or click the lightbulb icon), then press Enter to apply the replacement.
5. Configure — add noAnimalViolence.enable or noAnimalViolence.severity to your settings.json to tune behavior per workspace.

Install from VSIX (pre-release or local build)

git clone https://github.com/Open-Paws/vscode-no-animal-violence.git
cd vscode-no-animal-violence
npx @vscode/vsce package
# Then: VS Code Command Palette → "Extensions: Install from VSIX..." → select the .vsix file

Run in Extension Development Host

Open this repository in VS Code and press F5. A new VS Code window opens with the extension loaded and ready to test immediately.

Features

Real-Time Diagnostics

The extension scans every open document using 65+ case-insensitive regex patterns with word boundaries. Matches appear as squiggly underlines at warning severity by default. The Problems panel (Ctrl+Shift+M) shows the full list with suggested alternatives.

Example: typing // TODO: don't beat a dead horse here triggers:

Animal violence language: "beat a dead horse". Consider: "belabor the point"

Quick Fix Replacements

Place the cursor on a flagged phrase and press Ctrl+. to see the replacement action. The fix preserves the original casing — if the phrase starts with an uppercase letter, the replacement does too. The action is marked as the preferred fix, so Ctrl+. → Enter applies it in one keystroke.

Works Across All File Types

The extension activates for every file type (onLanguage:*). It scans raw document text, so it catches speciesist phrases in comments, string literals, documentation, Markdown, shell scripts, YAML configs, and anywhere else text appears.

Configuration-Aware Rescanning

Scanning and severity are configurable per workspace. Changes take effect immediately without restarting — all visible editors are rescanned when settings change.

Detected Pattern Categories

Category	Examples
Idioms	"beat a dead horse", "kill two birds with one stone", "let the cat out of the bag"
Industry euphemisms	"livestock" → farmed animals, "processing plant" → slaughterhouse, "humane slaughter" → slaughter
Developer terms	"cattle vs. pets" → ephemeral vs. persistent, "dogfooding" → self-hosting, "code monkey" → developer
Tech terminology	"master/slave" → primary/replica, "whitelist/blacklist" → allowlist/denylist, "kill the process" → terminate the process

The full pattern dictionary (65+ entries) is in extension.js. Patterns are auto-generated from the project-compassionate-code pipeline — submit pattern additions through that pipeline, not as direct edits to extension.js.

Configuration

Set these in your settings.json (user or workspace):

Setting	Type	Default	Description
noAnimalViolence.enable	boolean	true	Enable or disable scanning globally
noAnimalViolence.severity	string	"warning"	Diagnostic severity: "error", "warning", "information", or "hint"

Note: package.json currently declares settings under the speciesism.* namespace. The runtime code reads noAnimalViolence.*. Use noAnimalViolence.* in your settings.json until this discrepancy is resolved.

Example workspace settings:

{
  "noAnimalViolence.enable": true,
  "noAnimalViolence.severity": "information"
}

Documentation

• Pattern source of truth — no-animal-violence
• Pattern generation pipeline — project-compassionate-code
• Full ecosystem tool list
• Contributing — proposing new patterns

Architecture

Internal structure

Single-file, no-build architecture — the entire extension is extension.js with no bundler or compilation step. VS Code requires ^1.74.0.

Three responsibilities, kept separate:

1. Pattern dictionary (PATTERNS array) — auto-generated array of { pattern, phrase, suggest } objects. Case-insensitive RegExp with word boundaries. Longer/more-specific patterns listed first to avoid partial shadowing. Do not edit this array manually.

2. Diagnostic provider (scanDocument function) — reads noAnimalViolence.enable and noAnimalViolence.severity from workspace config, iterates PATTERNS against the document text, creates vscode.Diagnostic objects with _suggestion stashed for Quick Fix access. Scans are debounced at 300 ms on change events, immediate on save.

3. Code action provider (NoAnimalViolenceCodeActionProvider) — reads _suggestion from each matching diagnostic, preserves original casing, creates a QuickFix CodeAction marked as isPreferred. Registered for { scheme: "file", language: "*" }.

Extension lifecycle:

• activate — creates the DiagnosticCollection, registers the code-action provider, wires up onDidOpenTextDocument, onDidChangeTextDocument, onDidSaveTextDocument, onDidCloseTextDocument, and onDidChangeConfiguration listeners.
• deactivate — clears the debounce timer, clears and disposes the DiagnosticCollection.

Key files:

File	Purpose
extension.js	Full extension — pattern dictionary, diagnostics, Quick Fix provider, lifecycle
package.json	Extension manifest, activation events (onLanguage:*), VS Code config schema
tests/placeholder.test.js	Placeholder test suite (Node.js built-in test runner)
biome.json	Biome linter configuration
.pre-commit-config.yaml	Pre-commit hooks

No external runtime dependencies. Dev dependency: @biomejs/biome for linting.

Code Quality

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at Open-Paws/vscode-no-animal-violence. If you work in animal advocacy or want to help build movement infrastructure, this is a good first project — the codebase is a single JavaScript file with no build step.

Build and Test

# Package the extension as a .vsix file
npx @vscode/vsce package

# Run the placeholder test suite (Node.js built-in test runner)
node --test tests/placeholder.test.js

# Run the linter (Biome)
npx @biomejs/biome check .

# Maintain desloppify score ≥85
desloppify scan --path .

Manual Testing (Extension Development Host)

1. Open this repository in VS Code.
2. Press F5 — a new VS Code window opens.
3. Open any file and type a known phrase (e.g. // beat a dead horse).
4. Verify: squiggly underline appears, Problems panel shows the diagnostic, Ctrl+. offers the Quick Fix.
5. Verify noAnimalViolence.enable: false suppresses all diagnostics.
6. Verify that changing noAnimalViolence.severity to "error" updates the squiggly color without restarting.

Proposing New Patterns

Pattern changes go through the project-compassionate-code auto-generation pipeline. To propose a new pattern, open an issue with:

• The phrase to detect
• Why it is speciesist
• The suggested alternative
• A regex that matches it with word boundaries

Code Standards

• Single-file, no-build architecture — resist adding a build step or bundler.
• Every catch block must handle a specific error; never suppress silently.
• New patterns require manual verification in the Extension Development Host before release.
• Run desloppify scan --path . and maintain a score of 85 or higher.

Ecosystem

This extension is the IDE layer of a suite that enforces the same canonical rule dictionary across the full developer workflow:

Tool	Enforcement point
This extension	Real-time, in the editor as you type
no-animal-violence	Canonical rule dictionary (source of truth)
no-animal-violence-pre-commit	Local git commit hook
semgrep-rules-no-animal-violence	CI pipeline (Semgrep)
eslint-plugin-no-animal-violence	ESLint / JS/TS linting
danger-plugin-no-animal-violence	PR review automation (Danger.js)
reviewdog-no-animal-violence	PR inline annotations (reviewdog)
no-animal-violence-action	GitHub Actions CI check
vale-no-animal-violence	Prose linting (Vale)

Impact and Adoption

The extension is published under the open-paws publisher ID on the VS Marketplace. Marketplace install metrics are not yet instrumented into the org's Lever 3 tracking — this is a known gap noted in the strategy repo.

The extension is recommended as the standard real-time language checker for all Open Paws developers and is included in contributor onboarding setup instructions.

License and Acknowledgments

MIT — Open Paws, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Pattern dictionary sourced from the no-animal-violence canonical rule set, auto-generated via the project-compassionate-code pipeline.

Academic grounding:

• Dunayer, J. (2001). Animal Equality: Language and Liberation. Ryce Publishing.
• Stibbe, A. (2012). Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology and Reconnection with the Natural World. Wesleyan University Press.
• Singer, P. (1975). Animal Liberation. HarperCollins.

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