Captain for VS Code
Run your work with Claude Code — sessions, efforts, and artifacts — right
inside your editor. Captain brings its agent panel to VS Code so you can drive
AI coding sessions, track work from idea to merge, and review what was produced,
without leaving the window you're already in.
What you get
- Agent sessions in a panel. Start and manage Claude Code sessions in an
editor tab, with a full terminal, alongside your files.
- Efforts, from idea to merge. Follow a piece of work through its stages,
with the review gates and sign-offs that keep everyone aligned.
- Artifacts you can read and review. See what each stage produced —
proposals, plans, results — versioned and in one place.
- One shared experience. The same Captain panel you already use on the
desktop, hosted in VS Code.
Getting started
- Install the extension.
- Open the command palette (
Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and run
Captain: Open Panel.
- Sign in when prompted, pick your workspace, and start or resume an effort.
You'll need Claude Code installed — Captain
launches the claude CLI to run sessions.
Settings
Open Settings → Extensions → Captain to configure:
captain.claudePath — the absolute path to your claude executable. Set
this only if Captain reports "Claude Code CLI not found" — for example when
claude is a shell alias or function rather than a plain program on your
PATH. Point it at the actual executable the alias runs, not the text an
alias-resolving command prints. (When claude is a plain program on your
PATH, (Get-Command claude).Source on Windows or command -v claude on
macOS/Linux prints its path.)captain.telemetry.enabled — toggle anonymous usage telemetry (see below).
Your privacy
Captain collects anonymous usage telemetry to help us improve the extension.
It's on by default and respects VS Code's global telemetry setting.
- What's collected — only anonymous, enumerated product events: session
lifecycle, which panel tab you open, discrete UI actions, and redacted error
categories, tagged with an anonymous install id plus your OS and architecture.
- What's never collected — no source code, file contents, prompts, file
paths, repository names or URLs, branch names, environment variables,
credentials, or any free text you type.
- Turning it off — telemetry is sent only when both VS Code's
telemetry.telemetryLevel
and captain.telemetry.enabled allow it. Turning off either disables it
immediately, no reload required.
See the Captain privacy policy for details.
Learn more
Visit getcaptain.dev to learn about Captain.
Building or contributing to the extension? See DEVELOPMENT.md in the source
repository.
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