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<aid="v17-1"></a>
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## Version 17.1
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#### Thursday, May 15, 2025
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GitLens 17.1 brings significant enhancements to AI-powered explanations, more AI provider options, introduces major Visual History improvements, and includes performance optimizations to Git operations and the Commit Graph.
We've greatly expanded AI explanation capabilities beyond just commit explanations, making it easier understand more aspects of your repository, from more places in GitLens.
**✨Explain** functionality now includes generating summaries of changes for **branches**, **working changes**, and **stashes** in Preview. All summaries will open in rendered markdown instead of the Commit Details panel for better visibility and persistence.
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You'll find ✨Explain options for commits, branches, stashes, and working changes in several places:
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- In the Commit Graph
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- Available as commands in the command palette
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- In many GitLens views: Commits, Branches, Stashes, Search & Compare, etc.
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- In branch cards in the Home view
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With these new AI explanation capabilities, you can quickly understand:
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- What changed across all commits in a branch - ✨Explain Branch (Preview)
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- What you've modified in your working directory - ✨Explain Working Changes (Preview)
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- What you've previously stashed - ✨Explain Stash (Preview)
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### AI Provider Support
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We've also expanded AI provider support to give you more options when using GitLens AI features, including:
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- New OpenAI and Google models
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- Self-hosted Azure AI models
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- OpenAI-compatible API providers
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- Local Ollama models
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- OpenRouter support
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### Home Workflow Improvements
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The Home view now provides more accurate context about your work and offers more flexibility in how you manage branches and their relationships.
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-**Improved issue association** for more accurate tracking of issues related to branches
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-**Manual merge target selection** allows you to change the merge target for your active branch when the assumed target isn't correct
### GitLens Visual History: A Reimagined History Experience
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We're excited to introduce the all-new Visual History feature in GitLens, a powerful evolution of Visual File History. This reimagined view provides a dynamic and insightful visualization of your repository's history, offering unparalleled flexibility to explore changes across files, folders, branches, and your entire project.
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Visual History empowers you to understand the evolution of your codebase in a whole new way, helping you answer critical questions about who changed what, when, and in which context.
-**New navigation breadcrumb** allowing you to start at file level and move up to folder and repo levels
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-**Interactive diff scrubber** for more precise navigation of diff history
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-**Performance improvements** when loading visualizations and zooming
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-**Repository visualization** accessible directly from the Home view
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### Smarter, Faster Git
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This release brings major improvements to how GitLens interacts with Git under the hood — delivering faster performance, better accuracy, and more responsiveness, especially in large repositories.
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-**Rewritten Git execution and parsing engine** for dramatically faster and more reliable Git operations.
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-**Smarter contributor stats** with improved fetching performance and richer data.
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-**Faster and more accurate commit searches** across the Commit Graph and Search & Compare views.
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-**Streamlined file and line history** with more precise results and snappier performance.
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-**Improved Git cancellation handling** for smoother UX and lower system impact.
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-**New performance settings**, like delaying file detail loading on commits, give you more control in large repos.
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These enhancements ensure GitLens continues to scale with your codebase — helping you move faster with more confidence.
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---
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### Added
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- Adds AI-powered "Explain" commands for work-in-progress (WIP) changes, commits, stashes, and branches
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- Adds _Explain Branch Changes (Preview)_, _Explain Changes (Preview)_, and _Explain Working Changes (Preview)_ actions to branches, commits and stashes, and WIP, respectively in the _Commit Graph_
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- Adds _Explain Branch Changes (Preview)_ and _Explain Changes (Preview)_ actions to branches, commits and stashes in the other GitLens views
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- Adds an _✨ Explain_ button to the editor and status bar blame hovers
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- Adds an _✨ Explain_ button above the commit message in the _Inspect_ view which replaces the _Explain_ panel
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- Adds _Explain Branch Changes (Preview)_ and _Explain Working Changes (Preview)_ (when applicable) actions to the `...` menu on the _Home_ view
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- Adds _Explain Branch Changes (Preview)_, _Explain Commit Changes (Preview)_, _Explain Stash Changes (Preview)_, and _Explain Working Changes (Preview)_ actions to the Command Palette
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- Adds updated AI provider and model support for GitLens' AI features
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- Adds Ollama and OpenRouter support ([#3311](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/3311), [#3906](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/3906))
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- Adds Google Gemini 2.5 Flash (Preview) model, and OpenAI GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, GPT-4.1 nano, o4 mini, and o3 models ([#4235](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4235))
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- Adds support for Azure AI (OpenAI-compatible) models
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- Adds support for custom OpenAI-compatible providers ([#4263](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4263))
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- Adds `gitlens.ai.enabled` setting to disable all AI-powered features
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- Adds a walkthrough for AI features
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- Adds an all-new _Visual History_, a powerful evolution of the _Visual File History_, providing a dynamic and insightful visualization of your repository's history, offering flexibility to explore changes across files, folders, branches, and your entire project
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- Visualize the history sliced by author (the default) or by branch (when applicable), providing different perspectives on contributions and development lines
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- Slicing by author allows you to see the contributions of each author over time
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- Slicing by branch allows you to see unmerged commits on parallel development lines — only available when viewing the history of all branches of a file or folder
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- Use the zoom/pan functionality to focus on specific timeframes or areas of interest via mouse wheel or zoom buttons
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- Adds a breadcrumb navigation bar, with branch switcher and file/folder picker, allowing you to easily navigate the history of files, folders, branches, or the entire repository
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- Hold `Alt` or `Shift` when clicking on the breadcrumbs to open the repository or folder in a new tab
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- Adds the configuration popover to customize the visualization, including the branch or all branches, timeframe, and how to slice the history
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- Adds a scrubber bar to provide an almost time-lapse view for navigating through the changes introduced with each commit in history
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- Adds _Visualize Repo History_ and _Visualize Branch History_ actions to the _Home_ view
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- Adds _Show Visual History_ command to the Command Palette
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- Adds the ability to change a branch's merge target in Home view. ([#4224](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4224))
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- Adds enhanced integration with Azure DevOps, Bitbucket, and Bitbucket Data Center to support associated accounts and pull requests on commits ([#4192](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4192))
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- Adds the ability to search for GitHub Enterprise and GitLab Self-Managed pull requests by URL in Launchpad
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- Adds enhanced and improved accuracy and performance of the revision navigation ([#4200](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4200))
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- Adds support for navigating line ranges in addition to individual lines
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- Adds "changes" statistics for stashes in the _Commit Graph_
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- Adds _Open File at Revision from Remote_ command to open the specific file revision from a remote file URL
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- Adds `Copy SHA` action to editor hovers
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- Adds avatars to the hidden Branch / Tags popover in the _Commit Graph_
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### Changed
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- Changes the display of autolinks in the _Inspect_ and _Commit Graph Inspect_ views ([#4286](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4286)).
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- Replaces the autolinks panel with a new compact "footer" bar below the commit message
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- Optimizes (rewrote) Git execution and parsing for significantly improved performance, especially with large repositories, and reliability
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- Improves contributor fetching performance, especially for large repositories, and adds more advanced data for contributor statistics
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- Improves performance of loading data for the _Commit Graph_
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- Improves cancellation support in many Git operations for better responsiveness and system resource usage
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- Adds `gitlens.advanced.commits.delayLoadingFileDetails` setting to delay loading full commit file details until required to improve performance even more for large repositories
- Switches the _Commit Graph_ webview to use [Lit](https://lit.dev/) and upgraded to React 19 for the graph component
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- Improves commit search performance and reliability, epecially when paging in new results
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- Improves branch name autolink matching logic for better accuracy and fewer false positives ([#3894](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/3894))
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- Improves commit search accuracy and performance both in the _Search & Compare_ view and the _Commit Graph_
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- Improves commit searches in the _Search & Compare_ view to show only the matching files for file or change-based searches
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- Improves commit searches in the _Search & Compare_ view to show matching stashes
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- Improves accuracy and performance of the _File History_ and _Line History_ views
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- Improves performance of the _Contributors_ view, especially with large repositories
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- Adds a configurable `gitlens.views.contributors.maxWait` timeout setting for fetching contributors to avoid potentially long waits
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- Improves GitHub integration authentication check performance, when the authentication extension is disabled or unavailable (Cursor, Windsurf, etc) ([#4065](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4065))
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- Improves AI model adherence to provided custom instructions ([#4267](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4267))
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- Changes cherry-pick command no longer use/open a terminal ([#3531](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/3531))
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- Improves date setting descriptions ([#3953](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/3953))
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### Fixed
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- Fixes an error that can occur when retrieving the active repository, such as when the current file is not part of a repository.
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- Fixes cache collision between issues and PRs in autolinks ([#4193](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4193))
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- Fixes incorrect PR Link Across Azure DevOps Projects ([#4207](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4207))
- Fixes timed out waiting for authentication provider to register in GitLens after update to version 16.3 ([#4065](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4065))
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- Fixes cloud integration sessions not refreshing when they expire mid-session ([#4240](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4240))
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- Fixes "Delete Worktree" doing nothing when the default worktree is already open in another window ([#4232](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4232))
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- Fixes some cases in which Azure DevOps queries fail or return unexpected results ([#4271](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/4271))
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- Fixes element with id is already registered for commit searches in the _Search & Compare_ view
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- Fixes hierarchical compaction in file trees (e.g., a parent folder disappearing if a subfolder with a similar name exists)
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- Fixes cherry-pick commit ordering by falling back to author date if committer date matches
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- Fixes issues when using older versions of Git (>= Git 2.7.2)
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- Fixes cases where rename detection was not working properly
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### Removed
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- Deprecates the `gk-target-base` Git configuration key
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### Engineering
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- Bumps `eslint-plugin-import-x` to v4.10.5 — thanks to [PR #4236](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/pull/4236) by JounQin ([@JounQin](https://github.com/JounQin))
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