Traffic Light Status
A VS Code extension featuring a large traffic light indicator that shows your AI/terminal coding activity at a glance — visible from across the room.
🔴 Red = needs user confirmation
🟡 Yellow = AI is thinking/working
🟢 Green = done / idle
What It Does
This extension provides real-time visual status feedback for AI-assisted coding sessions (like opencode, Claude Code, Cursor CLI, etc.) by displaying a large colored circle in the VS Code sidebar. Any external tool or terminal command can update the indicator by writing to a simple status file.
Features
| Feature |
Description |
| Large Webview Circle |
A big colored circle (default 64px ≈ 2cm) in the Explorer sidebar — easily visible from across the room |
| Status Bar Icon |
Compact traffic light icon in the status bar |
| File-based Control |
Any tool can set the state by writing red/yellow/green to a status file |
| Terminal Watcher |
A companion script (traffic-light-watcher) renders the same indicator in a terminal pane for opencode users |
| Configurable Size |
Adjust the circle size (20px-300px) via VS Code settings |
| Click to Cycle |
Click the circle or status bar icon to cycle through states |
Quick Start
# 1. Clone and open in VS Code
git clone https://github.com/enosiii/traffic-light-status.git
code traffic-light-status
# 2. Compile
npm install
npm run compile
# 3. Press F5 to launch in a dev window
# The Traffic Light Status view appears in the Explorer sidebar
Using from the terminal / opencode
# Run the watcher in one terminal pane
node traffic-light-watcher
# In another terminal (inside or outside VS Code)
echo "red" > .vscode/traffic-light.status # needs your attention
echo "yellow" > .vscode/traffic-light.status # AI is working...
echo "green" > .vscode/traffic-light.status # done
# Or use the helper script
./traffic-light red "Waiting for your input on the API key"
./traffic-light yellow "Generating the report..."
./traffic-light green "All done!"
States
| Color |
State |
Meaning |
| 🔴 |
red |
Needs user confirmation / interaction |
| 🟡 |
yellow |
AI is currently working / thinking |
| 🟢 |
green |
Done / no activity |
| ⚪ |
off |
Indicator off (status file still tracked) |
Configuration
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
trafficLightStatus.statusFile |
.vscode/traffic-light.status |
Path to the status file |
trafficLightStatus.circleSize |
64 |
Circle diameter in pixels (20-300) |
trafficLightStatus.showStatusBarItem |
true |
Show indicator in status bar |
trafficLightStatus.showLabels |
true |
Show legend labels in webview view |
API (for integration)
Any tool can set the traffic light by writing to the status file:
# Python
with open(".vscode/traffic-light.status", "w") as f:
f.write("yellow\nGenerating test cases...")
// JavaScript / Node.js
import { writeFileSync } from "fs";
writeFileSync(".vscode/traffic-light.status", "red\nWaiting for confirmation");
Development
Build
npm install
npm run compile
Test / Debug
- Open the folder in VS Code
- Press F5 — a new window opens with the extension loaded
- The Traffic Light Status view appears in the Explorer sidebar
Watch for changes
npm run watch
Publishing
See the GitHub repo for the latest version.
Install from the Marketplace (once published):
code --install-extension enosiii.traffic-light-status
License
MIT — see LICENSE
