Pull every date and timestamp out of the current file in one keystroke
Any text file — JSON, YAML, CSV, XML, TOML, Markdown, logs, HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Go, and the rest
Useful? A star or rating is how other developers find it — ★ GitHub · ★ Open VSX · ★ Marketplace
Open a file, press Ctrl+Alt+D (Cmd+Alt+D on Mac), and every date in the document lands in a new editor — deduplicate, sort, analyze, convert, filter, or validate it from there. Works in VS Code and in VS Code–based editors like Cursor and VSCodium (installable from Open VSX).
- Log analysis — timestamps from server logs: ISO, syslog, and Apache access-log formats
- Data review — dates and epochs from JSON, YAML, CSV, and XML
- Code audit — date literals and
new Date()/Date.parse()/moment()/dayjs()/DateTime.fromISO()arguments in JS/TS, including calls formatted across multiple lines
| Where | What you get | Install |
|---|---|---|
| VS Code | The extraction, in your editor, on a keystroke | Marketplace |
| Cursor, VSCodium, Windsurf | The same extension | Open VSX |
| A terminal or a CI step | The same run over a whole tree, with exit codes | cargo install dates-le · crates.io |
| Any MCP agent, via Node | extract_dates over stdio |
npx dates-le-mcp · npm |
| Zed | The MCP server as a context server | zed-industries/extensions#7079 (pending review) |
The same engine runs as an MCP server, so an agent can call it directly instead of you running a command.
| Editor | How |
|---|---|
| VS Code 1.101+ | Nothing to install — the extension registers extract_dates with agent mode |
| Zed | Dates-LE — pending review |
| Claude Code | claude mcp add dates-le -- npx -y dates-le-mcp |
| Cursor, Windsurf, anything else | point it at npx dates-le-mcp |
extract_dates(content, format?, filename?, dedupe?, maxResults?)
Returns every date with its notation, epoch value where resolvable, and 1-based line and column, capped at 500 by default with meta.truncated.
The server takes content and returns data — it reads no files and makes no network requests of its own. Published as dates-le-mcp on npm and as io.github.nolindnaidoo/dates-le in the MCP registry.
Configuring it by hand — any host with an MCP config file
Most hosts read a JSON config. Add one entry:
{
"mcpServers": {
"dates-le": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "dates-le-mcp"]
}
}
}-y skips the install prompt on first run. Pin a version if you would rather not track releases — dates-le-mcp@2.3.1.
Prefer not to go through npx on every launch? Install it once and point at the binary instead:
npm install -g dates-le-mcp{
"mcpServers": {
"dates-le": { "command": "dates-le-mcp" }
}
}It speaks MCP over stdio and needs no environment variables, no API key and no configuration of its own. To check it before wiring it into anything:
echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}' | npx -y dates-le-mcpThat prints the tool list and exits — if you see extract_dates, the server works.
| Format | Language IDs | What gets extracted |
|---|---|---|
| JSON | json |
Every recognized date pattern in the content |
| YAML | yaml, yml |
Every recognized date pattern in the content |
| CSV | csv |
Every recognized date pattern, cell by cell |
| XML | xml |
Date patterns outside comments (inline and multiline comments are skipped) |
| Log / plain text | log, plaintext |
Everything above plus YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss log lines, syslog (Mon DD HH:mm:ss), and Apache access-log timestamps |
| JavaScript / TypeScript | javascript, javascriptreact, typescript, typescriptreact |
Everything above plus string arguments to new Date(), Date.parse(), moment(), dayjs(), DateTime.fromISO() |
| HTML | html |
Everything above plus datetime attributes, date-bearing <meta> tags, and JSON-LD datePublished/dateModified |
| TOML / Markdown | toml, markdown, md |
Every recognized date pattern in the content |
| INI / properties | ini, cfg, conf, properties |
Every recognized date pattern in the content |
| Anything else | every other language ID | Every recognized date pattern in the content |
Every document is read. A format only ever adds patterns to the shared ones, so a language ID this does not name — Python, Go, Rust, shell, SQL — is scanned with the shared patterns rather than refused. What it does not get is the format-specific extras: Jan 15 10:30:47 is a date in a log file and three words in a Python one.
Recognized date patterns: ISO 8601 in extended (2024-01-15T10:30:00Z, with optional milliseconds and offset), basic (20240115, 20240115T103045Z), week (2024-W03, 2024-W03-1) and ordinal (2024-015) form; RFC 2822 (Mon, 15 Jan 2024 10:30:00 GMT); Unix epochs in seconds, milliseconds, microseconds and nanoseconds (exactly 10, 13, 16 or 19 digits; everything wider than 10 must also land between 2001-09-09 and 2100, so a request id or a card number is not a date in the 2200s, and digits embedded in longer numbers or in the fraction of a float are never matched at all); UTC strings; US-style M/D/YYYY HH:mm:ss; and bare YYYY-MM-DD. Every occurrence is reported with its real line and column. Values that cannot be resolved to a timestamp are not extracted.
Timezone names are the fixed offsets GMT/UT/UTC/Z, the eight US abbreviations, and CEST, CET, BST, JST, AEST, IST. They are fixed, not zone-aware.
Known limitations: M/D/YYYY assumes US ordering; syslog lines carry no year, so the current year is assumed; IST names three different zones and is read as India's +05:30; a bare 8-digit run is only a date inside 1900–2099, and a 10-digit number in the plausible epoch range cannot be told from a phone number.
The same extraction runs from a terminal or a CI step: a Rust CLI in
crate/, sharing one corpus with the extension —
crate/fixtures/ — so the two can never read a
document differently.
dates-le . # every date in the tree, as JSON
dates-le --before 2026-01-01 . # everything already in the past
dates-le --sort --iso config/ # ordered by instant, in readable form
dates-le mcp # the same extraction over MCP on stdioThe instant is the point. 2024-01-15, 1705276800 and
Mon, 15 Jan 2024 are one moment written three ways, and resolving each
to a number is what makes them sortable and comparable rather than three
strings to read. Resolution matches Date.parse in V8 exactly — legacy
parser included — against 178 cases taken from V8 itself.
A date with no timezone resolves against the machine's, because that is
the true answer and it genuinely differs by machine. TZ is honoured.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
Dates-LE: Extract Dates (Ctrl+Alt+D / Cmd+Alt+D) |
Extract all dates from the active document |
Dates-LE: Analyze Dates |
Statistics, patterns, clusters, gaps, and anomalies |
Dates-LE: Convert Dates |
Convert extracted dates to ISO, RFC 2822, Unix, UTC, local, simple, or a custom format |
Dates-LE: Filter Dates |
Filter by range, format, duplicates, future/past |
Dates-LE: Validate Dates |
Check extracted dates against selectable rules |
Dates-LE: Deduplicate Dates |
Remove duplicate lines from the results |
Dates-LE: Sort Dates |
Sort results chronologically or alphabetically |
Dates-LE: Open Settings |
Open Dates-LE settings |
Dates-LE: Help |
Built-in documentation |
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
dates-le.openResultsSideBySide |
true |
Open results beside the current editor |
dates-le.copyToClipboardEnabled |
false |
Also copy results to the clipboard |
dates-le.notificationsLevel |
silent |
all = every notification, important = warnings + errors, silent = errors only |
dates-le.safety.enabled |
true |
Guardrails for very large files |
dates-le.safety.fileSizeWarnBytes |
1000000 |
Refuse extraction above this file size |
dates-le.statusBar.enabled |
true |
Show the status bar item |
dates-le.telemetryEnabled |
false |
Local-only event log (see Privacy) |
Twelve languages besides English:
German · Spanish · French · Indonesian · Italian · Japanese · Korean · Portuguese (Brazil) · Russian · Ukrainian · Vietnamese · Chinese (Simplified)
Both halves are covered — the manifest (command titles, setting names and descriptions) and everything shown while the extension runs (notifications, the status bar, quick-picks and prompts). The extension follows VS Code's display language, so it matches whatever the editor is already set to; no setting of its own.
- No network access. The extension never sends data anywhere. The
telemetryEnabledsetting only writes events to a local Output Channel you can inspect (Dates-LE Telemetry). - The MCP server holds the same line. It takes content as an argument and returns data: no filesystem access, no network calls, no telemetry. Your agent already has file-read tools, so duplicating them inside the server would add a path-traversal surface for no capability.
check:mcp-bundlefails the build if the server ever imports something that could reach either. - Error notifications redact home directories and credential-shaped fragments.
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| What the tool is allowed to say — scope, output contract, refusals, non-goals | crate/SPEC.md |
| How the extension is built and held together — architecture, invariants, toolchain, release | AGENTS.md |
| How the CLI is built and held together | crate/AGENTS.md |
| What changed | CHANGELOG.md · crate/CHANGELOG.md |
| The tool's page, and the other fifteen | letools.dev/tools/dates-le |
| Input | Size | Found | Time | Rate | Scan speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Server log (ISO) | 1.74 MB | 40,000 | 139.92 ms | 285,887/sec | 12.5 MB/s |
| JSON records | 1.42 MB | 25,000 | 82.75 ms | 302,132/sec | 17.2 MB/s |
| CSV export | 0.64 MB | 40,000 | 39.15 ms | 1,021,610/sec | 16.3 MB/s |
Median of 7 runs after warmup, on Apple M5 Pro, 24 GB RAM, Node 24.3.0. Inputs are generated
by scripts/benchmark.ts rather than checked in, so the sizes above are
exactly what was measured. Reproduce with bun run benchmark.
These are machine-specific and are not asserted in CI — a benchmark that gates a build only tells you how busy the runner was.
| Metric | Coverage |
|---|---|
| Statements | 91.69% |
| Branches | 81.39% |
| Functions | 96.32% |
| Lines | 92.97% |
228 test cases across 19 files, plus an integration suite that runs
in a real VS Code extension host and an end-to-end test that installs the
built .vsix into a clean profile.
Generated from a real run — coverage/coverage-summary.json and
coverage/test-results.json — by scripts/coverage-readme.js; CI fails if
this section drifts. Reproduce with bun run test:coverage, and the case
count is the one vitest prints.
Sixteen single-purpose tools for the work in front of every model. Each ships a Rust CLI and an MCP server. One page: letools.dev
Get it out
- String-LE — Extract every string in a codebase, with its position, so a person can read them
- Numbers-LE — Extract every hardcoded number in a codebase, so a person can check them
- Units-LE — Extract every quantity with its unit, normalized, and refuse the ambiguous ones by name
- Dates-LE — Extract every date and timestamp, and the exact instant each one resolves to
- IDs-LE — Extract every UUID, ULID, NanoID, ObjectId and Snowflake, and decode the time inside
- IPs-LE — Extract every IP address, CIDR block and MAC, normalized and classified by scope
- URLs-LE — Extract every URL in a codebase, with its protocol and exact position
- Paths-LE — Extract every file path in a codebase, and say whether it still points at anything
- Colors-LE — Extract every color in a codebase, and say which ones are not in your palette
Check it
- Regex-LE — Find every regex in a codebase, and report which can be driven into catastrophic backtracking
- Versions-LE — Find where one dependency is constrained differently across a repository's manifests
- i18n-LE — Identify the i18n library a project uses, then audit its catalogs by that library's rules
- Scrape-LE — Check whether a page is scrapeable before the scraper is written, and say when it cannot tell
Guard it
- Secrets-LE — Find hardcoded credentials in a codebase, and never print one into the report
- EnvSync-LE — Compare the dotenv files in a tree, and say which keys are missing from which
- Unicode-LE — Find the Unicode that hides meaning — bidi controls, invisibles, homoglyphs, mixed scripts
Each stands on its own: no shared crate, no published core. Where two of them agree, it is because the same answer was right twice.
Contact — nolindnaidoo.com · GitHub · LinkedIn
Rust — pixelcoords and pixelactions are one loop: pixelcoords answers where, pixelactions acts there. Their own tools, their own voice — not part of the LE family.
- pixelcoords — Freeze your screen, mark regions, get pixel-exact coordinates and crops pixelcoords.dev · crates.io · docs.rs
- pixelactions — Consume human-verified coordinates, perform the interaction, confirm it landed pixelactions.dev · crates.io · docs.rs
MIT © nolindnaidoo