Claude AI for Visual Studio 2022

A native VSIX extension that brings Claude AI directly into Visual Studio 2022. No terminal, no browser, no copy-pasting. Powered by Anthropic Claude.

Complete Feature List

🧠 Smart Auto-Context

Claude automatically reads your focused open file when your question is about code — without you clicking anything. A two-tier classifier decides silently:

• Tier 1 (instant, no API call): regex patterns that are unambiguously code-related → attaches file. Patterns that are clearly general → skips.
• Tier 2 (fast Haiku call, ~50 tokens): fired only for ambiguous messages.

Attaches file automatically: "why is this throwing a null reference?" · "refactor this" · "add xml doc comments" · "explain this method" · "write unit tests" · "is this thread-safe?"

Does NOT attach file: "what is dependency injection?" · "difference between abstract and interface?" · "best practice for error handling?" · "hello"

Priority rules: Manual 📄 Active file > @mentions > Smart auto-context. If no file is open, Claude answers from general knowledge.

💬 Sidebar Chat Panel

• Open: View → Other Windows → Claude AI or Ctrl+Alt+C
• Can be docked, floated, or tabbed like any VS tool window
• Full conversation history in chat bubbles
• Streaming responses — Claude's reply appears word-by-word as it is generated
• ⏹ Stop — the Send button becomes a red Stop button while Claude is responding; click it to cancel mid-stream
• Expanding input box — grows line-by-line as you type; capped at 25% of the panel height, then scrolls
• Context window warning — a warm banner appears above the input when ≥ 50% of the 200 K-token context window is used. Text reads "You've used 85% of your session limit · resets in 12m" (reset time comes from the anthropic-ratelimit-tokens-reset response header; falls back to "new session resets it"). Includes a View usage link and a × to dismiss for the current session.
• Session auto-saved after every assistant reply

📂 Session History Sidebar

• Toggle with the ☰ button in the chat header
• Sessions grouped: TODAY, THIS WEEK, OLDER
• Each entry shows: title, first-message preview, timestamp
• 🔍 Search box — filters sessions by title, preview, and full message content in real time
• ✎ Rename button per session — opens an inline rename dialog
• 🗑 Delete button per session — with confirmation
• Delete all sessions button at the bottom of the sidebar
• Sessions stored at %APPDATA%\ClaudeVS\sessions\ as plain JSON files (one per session)
• Resuming a session replays the full message history

✦ Inline Code Suggestions

• Ghost text appears after your cursor while typing in .cs files
• Powered by claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 for low latency
• Tab — accept the suggestion
• Esc — dismiss
• *Alt+* — toggle on/off globally
• Configurable via Tools → Options → Claude AI → Inline Suggestions

✏ Diff View (Accept / Reject)

• Triggered by ✏ Ask to edit or the Fix & Build loop
• Side-by-side: original left, Claude's version right
• Green = added lines, red = removed lines
• Both panels scroll in sync
• ✓ Accept Changes — writes to disk, reloads in editor
• ✕ Reject — closes with no changes
• If Auto-accept is ON, diff is skipped and file is written directly

🔁 Fix & Build Loop

• Triggered by 🔁 Fix & Build in the chat toolbar
• Maximum 3 attempts
• Each attempt:
  1. Runs dotnet build (SDK-style) or msbuild (legacy)
  2. Parses all compiler errors (file + line + column + code)
  3. Reads every affected source file
  4. Claude fixes all errors in one pass
  5. Writes corrected files (respects Auto-accept / diff setting)
  6. Waits 500ms then recompiles
• Live progress streams line-by-line into a single chat bubble
• If errors remain after 3 attempts: remaining errors listed in chat, partial fixes kept

🖼 Image Paste

• Ctrl+V in the chat input — captures clipboard image
• 🖼 Image toolbar button — same action
• Drag and drop image files onto the chat area
• Supported: PNG, JPG/JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP
• Thumbnails appear in a strip above the input with × to remove before sending
• Can send images with no text
• Images base64-encoded and sent as multipart content — Claude sees the full image

📄 Active File Button

• Manually force-attaches the focused open file
• If text is selected in the editor, attaches only the selection — useful for asking about a single method without sending the whole file
• Toggles on/off — turns blue when active
• Takes priority over smart auto-context

@ File Mentions

• Type @ + 2+ characters of a filename in the chat input
• Fuzzy-matches all files in your solution
• Matched file appears as a chip/badge above the input
• Remove with × on the chip (tooltip: "Remove this file mention")
• Multiple files per message supported
• @ Mention file toolbar button pre-fills @ in the input

📋 Output / @terminal

• Type @terminal or @output in the chat input — an amber 📋 Output chip appears
• Click the 📋 Output toolbar button to add it with one click
• When sent, the VS Output window content (Build pane) is appended to the message
• Falls back to the recent command buffer if the Output window is empty
• Build errors are parsed and included in structured form alongside the raw log
• Useful for: "why did this build fail?", "what do these errors mean?", "fix these errors"

⚙ Auto-Accept Toggle

• The Auto badge (coloured dot) in the chat header
• Grey = OFF — diff view shown before every edit (default)
• Green = ON — edits applied directly to disk, no popup
• Click the badge to toggle
• When ON: optional VS status bar notification on apply
• Also in Tools → Options → Claude AI → Edit Behaviour

🛡 File Scope Protection

Before writing any file, the extension checks whether the target path is inside one of the solution's project directories. Projects can be anywhere on disk — including in a parent directory of the solution folder. If the target file is outside every project directory, an approval bubble appears in chat:

• ✅ Allow — proceed with this file operation
• ❌ Refuse — cancel; the file is not touched

This applies to: ✏ Ask to edit, the Fix & Build loop, and any auto-accepted edits.

🔒 Command Security

Every background command passes through CommandGuard before execution.

Tier 1 — Whitelisted (silent) Default: dotnet, msbuild, nuget, git, npm, yarn, pnpm, node, tsc, webpack, cake, fake, nuke

Tier 2 — Needs approval (approval bubble in chat) Unknown executables show a yellow bubble with the exact command and shell. Three buttons:

• ✅ Accept — run once, prompt again next time
• ✅ Accept & save to whitelist — run and add the executable to the whitelist permanently (disabled when no solution is loaded)
• ❌ Refuse — block and cancel the current operation

Tier 3 — Hard-blocked (no override possible)

• Filesystem: format, del /s /f /q, rd /s /q, rmdir /s /q, Remove-Item -Recurse, rm -r
• Registry: reg delete/add/import/export, Remove-ItemProperty, Set-ItemProperty HKLM
• Disk: diskpart, cipher /w
• System: shutdown, Restart-Computer, Stop-Computer
• Users: net user, net localgroup, Add-LocalGroup, New-LocalUser
• Obfuscated PS: -EncodedCommand, Invoke-Expression(, iex(, DownloadString
• Persistence: schtasks /create, New-ScheduledTask
• Firewall: netsh firewall/advfirewall/interface, Set-NetFirewallProfile
• Elevation: runas /user:administrator, Start-Process -Verb runas

🔒 Whitelist editor

• Click the 🔒 button in the chat header
• Lists all whitelisted executables — add, remove, or reset to defaults
• Read-only view of all hard-blocked patterns
• Whitelist is saved to {solutionDir}\.claude\command-whitelist.json — per-project and source-control friendly
• Save and Reset to defaults buttons are disabled when no solution is loaded (shown with an orange warning)

Tools → Options → Claude AI

Header Controls (top of chat panel)

Toolbar Buttons (bottom of chat panel)

Keyboard Shortcuts

Architecture

ClaudeVS/
├── ClaudeVSPackage.cs               # Package entry + all VS options settings
├── Commands/
│   ├── OpenChatCommand.cs           # Ctrl+Alt+C
│   ├── InlineSuggestCommand.cs      # Alt+\ toggle
│   └── AtMentionCommand.cs          # Focuses chat + prefills @
├── Models/
│   └── ChatMessage.cs               # ChatMessage, AttachedImage, ChatSession, MentionedFile
├── Services/
│   ├── ClaudeApiService.cs          # All Anthropic API calls
│   ├── SmartContextService.cs       # Classifies questions → attach file or not
│   ├── EditorContextService.cs      # Active file, selection, cursor, solution file list
│   ├── DiffService.cs               # LCS diff + writes files to disk
│   ├── SessionService.cs            # Save/load/delete sessions as JSON
│   ├── TerminalService.cs           # Silent PS/CMD runner + error parser
│   ├── BuildFixLoopService.cs       # Compile → fix → recompile loop
│   └── CommandGuard.cs              # Whitelist + approval + hard-block gate
└── UI/
    ├── ClaudeChatWindow.cs              # VS tool window wrapper
    ├── ClaudeChatWindowControl.xaml     # Main sidebar layout
    ├── ClaudeChatWindowControl.xaml.cs  # Chat logic, send, auto-context, images, Fix&Build
    ├── SessionHistoryControl.xaml       # History sidebar layout
    ├── SessionHistoryControl.xaml.cs    # Load, search, rename, delete sessions
    ├── CommandWhitelistDialog.cs        # Whitelist editor dialog
    ├── DiffViewerWindow.cs              # Diff popup host
    ├── DiffViewerControl.xaml           # Side-by-side diff layout
    ├── DiffViewerControl.xaml.cs        # Diff render, sync scroll, accept/reject
    ├── InlineSuggestionAdornment.cs     # Ghost text renderer
    └── InlineSuggestionAdornmentTagger.cs  # MEF listener, debounce, Tab/Esc

Models Used

Troubleshooting