Troubleshooting

The ts-chef icon or views are missing

Confirm ts-chef is installed and enabled for the current VS Code profile.
Run View: Open View… and search for ts-chef.
Right-click the Activity Bar and ensure the ts-chef container is checked.
Run Developer: Reload Window after installing or upgrading.
Check Help: Toggle Developer Tools and the Extension Host log for activation errors.

No operation appears for my selection

Select only the intended value, without surrounding quotes or punctuation when possible.
Lower tschef.confidenceThreshold if hover suggestions are too conservative.
Use Quick Convert Selection and search the complete catalog manually.
Use Deep Analysis of Selection for layered encodings.
Confirm that the operation’s display name exists in Complete operation catalog.

Hover analysis does not appear

Check:

tschef.hover.enabled is true;
tschef.hover.onDemand is true if the document was not scanned;
the value is below tschef.hover.maxInputCharacters;
the confidence threshold is not too high;
another extension is not monopolizing or obscuring the hover UI.

For integer literals, also enable tschef.hover.integerCalculator and use a supported source-code language mode.

A pipeline operation cannot be found

Pipeline text uses operation display names, not TypeScript class names. Copy the spelling from the Operations view or generated catalog. Ensure separators and parentheses are balanced, and quote argument values that contain a pipe.

Start with a minimal expression and add steps back one at a time:

From Base64

From Base64 | JSON Beautify

Live preview is disabled

This is expected if any of the following is true:

input comes from the editor, document, or clipboard instead of manual text;
output would modify or leave the preview;
an operation is expensive, random, networked, file-oriented, or analysis-oriented;
data or intermediate output exceeds a safety bound.

Select Run explicitly. Live preview restrictions are safety policy, not evidence that the pipeline is invalid.

A replacement was refused

ts-chef snapshots selected/editor text before asynchronous execution. If that range changes while an operation is running, the extension refuses to overwrite newer content. Select the intended text again and rerun the action.

Workspace pipelines or variables are unavailable

VS Code Restricted Mode disables workspace-scoped storage. Trust the workspace only if you understand and accept its contents, or use global storage. The status bar and Workspace Trust commands show the current state.

Pattern results change when switching editors

The Found Patterns view follows the active editor by default. Use the eye button or tschef: Pin Patterns (Stop Following) to keep the current result set. Set tschef.patterns.followActiveEditor to false for pinned-by-default behavior.

Scanning is slow

Prefer a document scan over a workspace scan.
Disable tschef.autoScanOnSave and tschef.patterns.autoScanOnFocus when working with many large files.
Clear results that are no longer required.
Avoid enabling the entropy heatmap permanently for very large documents.
Record reproducible timing, file sizes, VS Code version, OS, and ts-chef version when reporting a regression.

A graph will not connect or run

Graphs must be acyclic; remove any connection that feeds a downstream result back into an ancestor.
Ensure every operation node is reachable from an input.
Connect at least one named output and select a primary output.
Inspect the status shown on the first failing node.
Temporarily reduce the graph to one branch to isolate malformed arguments or incompatible data.

Static triage or YARA found something unexpected

Heuristics and YARA rules can produce false positives and false negatives. Validate the exact matching evidence, compare with known-good content, and use an isolated analysis environment if behavioral confirmation is required.

Reporting a bug

Search existing issues, then open a new report with:

ts-chef and VS Code versions;
operating system;
minimal input that is safe to share;
exact operation/pipeline and arguments;
expected and actual result;
relevant Extension Host logs;
whether the workspace is trusted.

Never attach live credentials, private keys, customer data, or an active malicious payload to a public issue.

Quick Workbench

No source editor available: focus the intended editor, keep it visible, then choose From Selection or From Document.
Source text changed: reload the selection and rerun. Replace intentionally refuses stale document versions and closed files.
Exports disabled: run again after editing input or parameters; a failed run invalidates earlier output.
Preview truncated: Copy and New Document still export the complete representation.
Binary source / Hex: choose the required output format. Invalid UTF-8 remains lossless hexadecimal.
Automatic preview unavailable: use Run Operation. Automatic input is limited to 65,536 code units; parameter changes require explicit execution.

Local release verification

Use Node 22 and Python 3.12+, run npm ci, install docs/requirements.txt in a Python virtual environment and run npm run release:verify. Set TSCHEF_PYTHON to that environment’s Python executable if needed. The pinned VS Code test download requires network access on first use. Linux requires a graphical display, normally xvfb-run -a npm run release:verify. Missing tools or test failures stop the gate; they are never treated as successful skips.

On Ubuntu 24.04 CI, use TSCHEF_TEST_NO_SANDBOX=1 xvfb-run -a npm run release:verify only for the isolated test harness when Chromium cannot use the runner sandbox. Both host and UI launchers honor this explicit Linux-only setting, including installed VSIX tests. Do not change system sandbox permissions or use this flag for daily VS Code work. Structured evidence is written under reports/test-results/<platform>/<host-or-ui>/<mode>/<run>/; failures include sanitized VS Code logs and UI window diagnostics. Test profiles contain synthetic data and are removed after each run.