How to See What Claude Code Changed (Like Cascade in Windsurf)

You don’t need Cursor or Windsurf to watch an AI edit your code. Cascade feels reassuring because you see each change, accept or reject it, and undo when it goes wrong. That’s not magic; it’s a diff view over your files. Claude Code edits the real files on your disk, so your editor’s built-in Git tools (the Source Control panel) and the /diff command give you the exact same watch-review-undo flow. Set up once, and your normal editor becomes a review cockpit. Here’s how, in four steps.

Why people think Claude Code “hides” its changes

Most comparison articles file Claude Code under “terminal tool, no visual review” and Cursor/Windsurf under “nice diffs in the editor.” That framing has hardened into common wisdom, and it’s misleading. Claude Code isn’t writing to some hidden buffer. It’s saving to the same files VS Code already watches. The moment you pair it with git and your editor’s Source Control panel, you get a visual, line-by-line view of everything it touched. The capability was always there; nobody wires it together for beginners. Let’s do that.

Step 1: Open the project in VS Code and turn on git

Open your project folder in VS Code (Cursor and Windsurf work identically, since they’re VS Code under the hood). If the project isn’t already a git repository, make it one: run git init in the terminal, then make a first commit so you have a clean baseline. Git is the “save points” system, and it’s what makes “what changed?” answerable at all.

Step 2: Run Claude Code inside the editor

Open the integrated terminal in VS Code (Terminal → New Terminal) and run claude. The first time, it installs the companion extension and connects to the editor; if it doesn’t link automatically, type /ide and pick your editor. Once connected, Claude Code stops dumping diffs as terminal text and instead opens its edits in the editor’s diff view, with the old version and the new version side by side, just like Cascade.

Step 3: Watch the Source Control panel as it works

Click the Source Control icon in the left sidebar (the branch-shaped one). As Claude edits, every changed file appears here marked M (modified) or U (new). Click any file and VS Code shows a clean side-by-side diff: removed lines in red, added lines in green, with change markers in the gutter next to your code. This is the heart of the Cascade experience, and it’s a standard editor feature. It works because Claude changed real files. You’re not trusting the AI blindly; you’re reading exactly what it did.

For a quick session-level summary inside Claude Code itself, type /diff: it shows what changed this turn, so you can review before you commit.

Step 4: Keep, fix, or undo

Now you’re in control, the same three ways Cascade offers:

• Keep it: if the diff looks right, stage and commit it (the + next to a file in the Source Control panel stages it; write a short message and commit). That’s your new save point.
• Fix part of it: stage only the lines you want and discard the rest from the panel. Git lets you accept a change hunk by hunk.
• Undo it: if a whole step went wrong, press Esc twice (or run /rewind) to roll back to an earlier checkpoint. Claude Code restores both your code and the conversation to that point.

The one honest caveat

Checkpoints and /rewind are a fast local undo, but they are not a replacement for git. They don’t track changes made by commands run in the terminal or by other programs, only Claude’s own file edits. So the durable habit is still: commit before you prompt, review the diff, commit again when you’re happy. Git is the seatbelt; checkpoints are the quick-undo button. Use both.

There also isn’t yet a single per-hunk “accept/reject” button in the terminal flow identical to some IDE agents, but the editor’s diff view plus git staging gives you the same fine-grained control, and it’s honest about what’s really on disk.

Make Claude Code your first coding tool

If you’re setting this up for the first time, our free AI for Coders tool walks you through picking the right assistant for your project, gives you the exact install command for your operating system, and generates a starter rules file so Claude works the way you want from day one. Two minutes there saves an afternoon of guessing. And once you’ve got the four-click review flow above, you can let an AI agent edit your code while you watch every line it changes.

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