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Gherkin PowerTools: Workspace Intelligence for Python Behave

Visual execution, AST-powered linting, and real-time impact analysis for enterprise BDD teams.
A premium VS Code testing environment that transforms plain-text Gherkin specifications into an interactive, debuggable, and strictly validated codebase.

Install from Marketplace Version Downloads


Run and Debug a Behave scenario from Test Explorer

Visually run, debug, and track your Python Behave scenarios directly from the VS Code Test Explorer.

⚡ Quick Start

  1. Install from the VS Code Marketplace.
  2. Open any .feature file to rapidly activate formatting and linting.
  3. (Behave only) Gherkin PowerTools automatically discovers your project and offers a guided Walkthrough.

Why Gherkin PowerTools?

A premium testing environment that eliminates the friction between plain-text .feature files and your Python backend logic:

  • Visual Testing Integration: Run, debug, and trace Python Behave scenarios visually directly from the VS Code sidebar.
  • Workspace Intelligence: Context-aware IntelliSense and Cmd+Click navigation with O(1) in-memory indexing.
  • Impact-Aware Safe Refactoring: Natively rename steps across your entire workspace (F2) and receive automatic alerts when the blast radius is large before committing the change.
  • Catch Errors Before CI: Dialect-aware real-time AST linting catches malformed syntax as you type.

🌟 Feature Highlights

See all features in the Full Documentation →

1. Missing Python Step Generation

Press Ctrl+. (Cmd+. on macOS) to instantly generate a valid Python stub—complete with extracted regex parameters—from any undefined Gherkin step. - Workspace-Aware: Intelligently infers the optimal destination based on your stepGlobs configuration, resolving ambiguity safely via QuickPick.

Generate a Python step stub from undefined Gherkin

2. Gherkin Health Dashboard & Anti-pattern Engine

Powered by the new BDD Anti-pattern Detection Engine, you can now visually identify unused, duplicated, ambiguous, or highly complex step definitions and scenarios. Gherkin PowerTools calculates Technical Debt and Maintainability, persisting branch-isolated historical snapshots to securely visualize your project's evolution over time in a premium, interactive dashboard. - Finding Suppression: Safely suppress deliberate anti-patterns using Quick Fixes, with all suppressions persisted to a centralized ledger (.gherkin-pt-suppressions.json). - Batch Fix Workflow: Run the Fix All Safe Auto-Fixable Problems command to automatically correct semantics-preserving errors across a whole document.

Interactive BDD source analytics and project health dashboard

3. Real-Time Impact Analysis

A Blast Radius CodeLens appears above every Python step definition. View exactly how many scenarios will be impacted before refactoring, or instantly see if a step is involved in multiple colliding matchers (Impact: Ambiguous). Click the CodeLens to jump directly to the affected scenarios.

Impact Analysis - Blast Radius CodeLens

🛠 Capabilities

Gherkin PowerTools acts in two tiers depending on your project:

Generic BDD Frameworks (Cucumber, SpecFlow, Playwright)

  • AST-Powered Formatting: Rapidly align tables, tags, and indentation (Shift+Alt+F or Editor Context Menu), including automatic formatting for embedded JSON DocStrings.
  • Structural Linting: Catch malformed scenarios across 70+ spoken languages in real-time, completely ignoring invalid text inside Gherkin DocStrings (""").
  • Find All References: Instantly locate all usages of a Gherkin step across your entire workspace (Shift+F12 or Context Menu).
  • Document Outline: Navigate complex .feature structures from the VS Code sidebar.
  • Gherkin Health Dashboard: Interactive modern webview to analyze oversized features, tag usage, and architectural anti-patterns with built-in DOM node limits for massive workspaces.

Exclusive to Python Behave

  • Context-Aware IntelliSense: Autocomplete powered by a robust transactional snapshot model, deterministic Step Definition Identity, recent-usage ranking, tag affinity, clean ambiguity grouping, robust regex snippet extraction, and precise AST-based parameter extraction for Scenario Outlines to perfectly match step templates with Example table headers.
  • Find All References: Natively find all feature files using a specific Python @step decorator directly from your Python code (Shift+F12 or Context Menu).
  • Step Refactoring: Safely extract steps or natively rename them across your entire workspace (F2 or Context Menu), featuring progressive disclosure that triggers VS Code's Refactor Preview pane for high-impact renames.
  • Test Explorer Integration: Run and debug features with line-by-line execution tracking, pristine Markdown-formatted error traces, and an automated Focus Mode that illuminates the active scenario in the editor. You can also re-run failed scenarios directly from their exception trace nodes.
  • BDD Anti-pattern Detection Engine: Instant technical debt diagnostics for unused, ambiguous, or duplicated step definitions. Features Object-based Configuration to dynamically scale heuristic severities (e.g. adjust max sizes per rule).
  • Standalone CLI (@carlos-camara/gherkin-pt): Enforce formatting, run the Anti-pattern Engine, and calculate project health metrics natively in your CI/CD pipelines. The CLI uses the exact same parsing, formatting, and BDD Anti-pattern engine as the VS Code extension. View the Capability Contract. (Note: In Remote Development environments like WSL or SSH, run the CLI from the VS Code Integrated Terminal, not your local OS terminal).

⚙️ Essential Configuration

Share team formatting and diagnostic rules by committing a .gherkin-powertoolsrc.json to your project root.

Setting Default Description
gherkinPowerTools.profile "custom" Formatting baseline: strict, team, minimal, legacy, or custom.
gherkinPowerTools.rules {...} Diagnostic rule overrides. Accepts string severities ("error") or configuration objects ({ "severity": "warning", "maxSteps": 20 }).
gherkinPowerTools.behave.stepGlobs ["**/steps/**/*.py", ...] Paths to Python step definitions.
gherkinPowerTools.behave.execution {"executable": "behave", "arguments": []} Secure Test Explorer execution command (e.g., {"executable": "poetry", "arguments": ["run", "behave"]}).
gherkinPowerTools.behave.localExecutable None Machine-specific override for the Behave executable absolute path.

Visit the Configuration Reference for all available settings.

Support & Contributions

Contributions are welcome! Please read the Contributing Guide.


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