Agent Worktrees

Run and monitor multiple Claude Code agents across your git worktrees, from one side panel.

Worktrees are the natural unit for running agents in parallel: each gets an isolated checkout, so sessions never step on each other's files. Agent Worktrees puts every worktree, its git state, and its running Claude agents in a single view.

Screenshots

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Worktrees, git status & agents	PR checks, review & comments	Settings & integrations	Skills used per agent

The Branches view opens as a full editor tab listing every branch with when and by whom it was last updated, its open PR status, git-based filters, and one-click worktree creation:

Highlights

• Every worktree at a glance — primary and linked worktrees with branch names and Primary / detached / locked badges.
• Git status per worktree — changed-file count, +/− line totals, and ahead/behind from upstream, refreshed on agent activity and window focus, plus a per-card refresh button to update one worktree's git (and PR/CI, when enabled) on demand.
• PR status at a glance — when a worktree's branch has a pull request, the card shows its title, state, CI checks, reviews and comments, plus an Out of date pill when the branch is behind its base branch and an Auto-merge pill when auto-merge is enabled.
• Start agents in a click — launch a Claude CLI session in any worktree, each in its own terminal. Reveal or stop it from the panel. Reveal works in the window that started the agent; another window can still see and stop it, and now tells you when its terminal lives elsewhere instead of doing nothing.
• Agent & Worktree in one step — create a fresh worktree with claude -w and start an agent in it together.
• Open in a new window — open any worktree in its own VS Code window in a click; if one is already open for that worktree, it is focused instead of duplicated.
• Switch a worktree's branch — an edit button beside the branch name lets you check out a different branch in that worktree, or create a new one, without leaving the panel.
• Live agent status — each agent shows as active, waiting, or idle, driven by Claude Code hook events.
• Skills used — see which Claude skills each agent has invoked.
• Subagents used — a robot count shows how many subagents each agent has spawned, plus the total across the worktree.
• Delete worktrees — remove a worktree (git worktree remove, with a force option that also overrides locks) without leaving the panel, then optionally delete its leftover branch in the same step, with an extra confirmation when that would lose unpushed or uncommitted work.
• Stale lock cleanup — Claude locks the worktrees it creates while a session runs; if a session crashes or is killed, the leftover lock used to leave a locked badge on a worktree with no agents and block deleting it. The panel now clears these dead-session locks automatically (locks you placed yourself are never touched).
• Branches view — a full-screen editor tab listing every branch in the repo, with each branch's open PR status and a one-click way to spin up a worktree and agent for any branch that does not have one yet.
• Buttons that show their work — actions that take a moment (starting an agent, creating a worktree, opening a window, fetching, refreshing GitHub) show a spinner in place of their icon while they run, so you can see the click landed instead of wondering if anything happened.

Branches view

A Branches button in the panel toolbar opens a dedicated editor tab listing every branch in the repository — your local branches plus branches that exist only on origin. Each row is tagged by where it lives — local only, **local

• remote**, or remote only — and shows how far ahead or behind its compare base it is (↑ to push, ↓ to pull). The base is the branch's upstream, or the repo's default branch when it has no upstream. Each row also tells you whether a worktree already exists for that branch: the ones that do show a Worktree exists marker alongside a Start agent button that launches a Claude agent in that existing worktree, and the ones that don't get a Create worktree & start agent button that builds the worktree right there in your current window and starts a Claude agent in it. Picking a remote-only branch checks it out as a new local tracking branch.

Worktrees created here (and by the New Worktree command) live inside your repo under .claude/worktrees/ — the same place Claude Code's own claude -w puts them — so they stay in one predictable spot instead of appearing next to your project folder. Tip: if you don't want that folder showing up as untracked in git status, add a /.claude/worktrees/ line to .git/info/exclude (or your .gitignore); the extension never edits those files for you.

This view is git-first. Each branch row shows when it was last updated (the relative time of its latest commit) and who made that commit, and a filter and sort bar across the top lets you slice the list — all from local git, with no loading and no token required. Nothing is filtered by default — every branch is listed until you make a selection:

• Updated by — pick one or more people (the committers of the listed branches) to show only the branches they last touched. You are pinned to the top of the list.
• Sort — Recently updated, Least recently updated, or Name (A–Z).
• PR Status — a single-select (shown only once a GitHub token is connected) that narrows the list by pull request state: All (no filter), Open, or Draft.
• Reviewer — a single-select (shown only once a GitHub token is connected) that narrows the list to branches whose PR has a review requested from you, i.e. the PRs you still have to review: All (no filter) or Review requested.
• Clear Filters — resets the author, PR Status and Reviewer filters in one click; enabled only while a filter is active. (Sort is left as you set it.)

Your filter and sort choices are remembered the next time you open the view. Close it like any editor tab; the Branches button reopens it.

When the GitHub integration is connected, a branch that has an open (or draft) pull request also shows it inline — its title, state badge, author, assignees and whether you are a requested reviewer — as a hint on the branch row. (The branches view fetches your open PRs in one bulk call, which doesn't include CI-check or review-approval detail; for the full checks-and-reviews rollup, see the PR on its worktree card.) The branch list paints instantly from local git; PR status loads in the background: opening the view starts a Fetch Open PRs of PR status on its own (the button spins until it lands, and the Last refreshed label fills in with the time), and you can re-run it anytime from that button (see below). Without a token the view simply lists every branch, with no PR info. (A dedicated PR view may come later.)

Fetch and prune. A Fetch button in the header pulls from the remote to refresh local branch state — ahead/behind counts — so the view reflects what actually landed. A Prune checkbox next to it (on by default) also removes tracking refs for branches deleted on the remote, so merged-and- deleted branches stop lingering as remote only rows.

Fetch Open PRs. When you have connected a GitHub token, a Fetch Open PRs button appears in the header beside a Last refreshed label. The view refreshes open PR and CI status automatically when it opens, and this button re-queries on demand afterwards. The label reads Never only until that first on-open refresh lands, then shows the time of the most recent one. The GitHub refresh runs without a git fetch — so you can refresh just the PR view, or just your local branch state, independently.

Delete branches. Every branch that exists on your machine shows a Delete Local button that removes the local branch only. The branch on the remote is left untouched, so there is nothing to undo on GitHub. (Remote-only branches have no local copy, so they show no button.) The repository's default branch (such as main) is never deletable, so it shows no Delete button. If the branch has commits that were never pushed, the confirm tells you how many would be lost. A branch whose PR was merged deletes cleanly without a false "not fully merged" warning, even after a squash-merge where git would otherwise refuse.

If the branch is currently checked out in your main window, deleting it is blocked (switch to another branch first). If it is checked out in one of your other worktrees, you can still delete it: the panel warns you, frees that worktree (it is left on a detached snapshot, with its files intact), and then removes the branch.

Clean up merged branches in one click. A header Delete gone button removes every local branch whose upstream branch is gone: the ones whose remote branch was merged and deleted (so they are just clutter now). It lists them and asks once before deleting, leaves anything checked out in a worktree alone, and asks a second time before force-deleting any branch that still has unmerged commits. Pair it with Prune so a branch deleted on the remote moments ago is recognized.

Jump to GitHub. Each branch name links straight to that branch on GitHub, and a Branches on GitHub link in the header opens the repository's full branches page.

Stay current. Opening the view reads your local branches right away without calling GitHub; the Fetch button pulls from the remote on demand, updating ahead/behind counts and pruning branches deleted there so phantom remote branches don't linger, while Refresh GitHub updates PR and CI status. Long branch lists are paged so they stay easy to scan, and the view only fetches branches for the repository you have open, never your other repositories.

How agent status works

The panel can't tell on its own whether a Claude session is working, waiting, or idle, so it uses Claude Code's hooks. With your explicit consent, it adds a small emitter to ~/.claude/settings.json that, on each hook event, writes a local state file the extension watches. Nothing is sent over the network — status flows entirely through local files, and you can remove the hooks anytime by editing that settings file.

Requirements

• The Claude Code CLI (claude) on your PATH.
• git and node on your PATH.
• A workspace whose first folder is inside a git repository.

Getting started

1. Install the extension and open a folder that is a git repository.
2. Open the Agent Worktrees view from the Activity Bar.
3. Accept the hook prompt to enable live agent status (optional but recommended).
4. Click Agent on any worktree to start a Claude session, or Agent & Worktree to spin up a new worktree and an agent together.

Troubleshooting

If the panel or Branches view seems slow or empty, open the panel Settings and switch to the Debug tab, then turn on Debug tracing (the "Agent Worktrees: Toggle Debug Tracing" command does the same). With it on, every external call - each git command and GitHub API request, with its duration and result - is logged to the "Agent Worktrees" output channel. Use Open log on the same tab to reveal it (or View: Output, then pick "Agent Worktrees"). That shows you exactly what is being run and what is slow or failing. It is off by default, and request headers (which carry your GitHub token) are never logged.

Privacy

Agent Worktrees runs on your machine and collects no telemetry. It reads local git state and Claude Code hook output from files in the extension's own private storage (nothing of the extension's lives in your ~/.claude tree apart from the hook entries it adds to settings.json once you consent). The only network requests it makes are to the GitHub API, and only when you connect a GitHub token to show pull request and CI status; with no token connected, it makes no network requests.