Terminal Watch
Recommended: Install the Terminal Watch Pack to install Terminal Watch and Terminal Watch Notifier together.
Terminal Watch watches your terminal so you don't have to. It launches a dedicated watched terminal, scans the output for your regex triggers, and pings you - in-editor or with a native OS notification - the moment one appears. Made for long builds, test runs, deployments, and CLI AI agents (Claude Code, Codex, Codebuff, …) you'd rather not babysit.
Created by Connor K.
Demo
🤖 CLI AI agent - set a trigger for the agent's "done" banner and walk away:
🧪 Test suite - get pinged the moment \d+ tests passed appears:
Highlights
- 🔔 Desktop + in-editor notifications when a command finishes
- ⚙️ Custom regex triggers with a cooldown to cut the noise
- 🔕 Listening toggle - nothing is scanned while it's off
- 🧠 Anti-spam gating - optional focus-silence and "require input" modes
- 🖥️ Container & remote friendly - notifications still land on your desktop
- 🤖 CLI AI agent ready - set a trigger for the agent's "done" banner and walk away
Quickstart
- Install the Terminal Watch Pack (or Terminal Watch + Terminal Watch Notifier).
- Click Terminal Watch in the status bar → turn Listening: ON.
- Click New Watched Terminal, pick a shell, run your command.
- Get notified when it's done. That's it.
Prefer the keyboard? Bind the two commands in keybindings.json:
[
{ "key": "ctrl+alt+t", "command": "terminal-watch.createWatchedTerminal" },
{ "key": "ctrl+alt+l", "command": "terminal-watch.openMenu" }
]
Triggers
Output is matched against your configured regexes (ANSI codes stripped). Defaults:
| Trigger |
Use case |
End session |
Freebuff wrapping up a prompt |
accept.{1,5}edits |
Agent asking to accept edits |
Build successful |
Build / compile finishing |
\d+ tests passed |
Test suite finishing |
Add your own: Ctrl+, → search Terminal Watch → add a pattern to terminalWatch.triggers. Each entry is a regular expression - e.g. Deployment complete fires when a deployment finishes.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Purpose |
terminalWatch.triggers |
["End session", "Build successful", "accept.{1,5}edits", "\\d+ tests passed"] |
Regexes that fire a notification |
terminalWatch.notificationMode |
"Both" |
Where notifications go: Desktop, VS Code, or Both |
terminalWatch.cooldownSeconds |
5 |
Minimum seconds between notifications |
terminalWatch.silenceWhileFocused |
false |
Only notify while this window is unfocused (you switched to another app) |
terminalWatch.requireUserInput |
true |
Only notify after you've typed in the watched terminal since the last notification |
terminalWatch.shellPath |
"" |
Custom shell executable; blank auto-detects the OS default |
terminalWatch.autoListeningEnabled |
false |
Start listening automatically when the extension activates |
Anti-spam gating
Two optional guards keep notifications useful instead of noisy:
silenceWhileFocused (default false) - while this VS Code window has focus you can see the terminal yourself, so matching triggers are silently consumed. Notifications only fire once you've switched to another app (Chrome, your editor elsewhere, …). Works in containers and remote workspaces too.requireUserInput (default true) - a notification only fires if you've typed in the watched terminal since the last one. A long-running command or AI agent that keeps printing triggers won't spam you while you're idle; type back to it and notifications resume. A trigger suppressed this way is consumed, so stale output never fires later - a fresh trigger detection is required.
Example use cases
| Workflow |
Trigger pattern |
| Freebuff wrapping up a prompt |
End session |
| Agent asking to accept edits |
accept.{1,5}edits |
| Any agent printing a completion summary |
completed\|finished\|done\|success |
| Test suite finishing |
\d+ tests passed |
| Build / compile finishing |
Build successful |
| Deployment finishing |
Deployment complete |
💡 Most AI agents print a final summary when a prompt finishes - set a trigger that matches that line (or the agent's exit banner) and you'll be notified the moment it appears.
How it's built
Two extensions split the work so notifications always appear on the machine you're sitting at:
| Extension |
Runs on |
Job |
| Terminal Watch |
workspace host (container / remote / local) |
spawns the watched terminal, matches triggers |
| Terminal Watch Notifier |
UI host (your machine) |
raises the native OS notification via node-notifier |
Terminal Watch reuses the PTY layer already inside VS Code: it loads the node-pty module bundled with the editor (vscode.env.appRoot) instead of shipping a native dependency, which keeps the extension tiny and platform-agnostic. That's an unsupported internal mechanism rather than a public API, so it can break on non-standard builds (Insiders, VSCodium, remote servers).
Compatibility
Requires VS Code ^1.125.0.
Tested primarily on Windows. macOS and Linux should work - node-pty ships with VS Code on every platform - but haven't been thoroughly verified. Please report issues!
🐳 Dev containers: Terminal Watch is a workspace extension, so it must be installed inside the container - add it to your devcontainer.json:
{
"customizations": {
"vscode": { "extensions": ["BladeFin.terminal-watch"] }
}
}
The Notifier stays on your local machine automatically - no container setup needed for it.
⚠️ Triggers match everything you type: regexes run against all terminal output, including echoed input - while you're actively typing in a watched terminal, your keystrokes can match early. Prefer patterns that match finished output, or rely on the cooldown.
Release notes
See CHANGELOG.md in this repo. License: MIT - see LICENSE.
