Sidekick Docker for VS Code

A Docker management dashboard embedded directly in VS Code, VSCodium, and compatible editors. Manage containers, Compose projects, images, volumes, and networks without leaving your editor.

Install

From VSIX

cd sidekick-docker-vscode
npm install
npm run build
npx vsce package
code --install-extension sidekick-docker-vscode-*.vsix

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/cesarandreslopez/sidekick-docker.git
cd sidekick-docker
bash scripts/build-all.sh

Then open the sidekick-docker-vscode folder in VSCode and press F5 to launch the Extension Development Host.

Usage

Open the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and run:

Sidekick Docker: Open Dashboard

or press Ctrl+Alt+D — Ctrl, not Cmd, on macOS too (macOS reserves Cmd+Opt+D for the Dock). The dashboard opens as a webview panel with the same layout and capabilities as the terminal TUI, and survives window reloads.

Commands

The activity-bar Containers tree groups containers by state (and by Compose project), with start/stop/restart/pause/unpause/remove and Open in Dashboard in the context menu and a status-bar item showing running/total counts.

Settings

Features

• Full Docker dashboard in VSCode — containers, Compose, images, volumes, networks
• Real-time updates — logs and stats stream live inside the editor
• Smart log highlighting — token-level syntax coloring for HTTP methods, status codes, URLs, IPs, timestamps, JSON keys, and more
• Log search & filter — search within log output with exact or fuzzy matching and match highlighting
• Log analytics — severity count badges and pattern clustering that groups similar logs into templates
• Container management — start, stop, restart, pause, unpause, remove containers directly
• Health status — shows healthy/unhealthy/starting indicators for containers with health checks
• Compose support — detect and manage Compose projects
• Stats monitoring — live CPU, memory, network I/O, and block I/O metrics with sparkline charts
• Filesystem inspector — view all filesystem changes inside containers (Files tab)
• Image layer explorer — inspect image layer history with sizes and Dockerfile instructions (Layers tab)
• Exec into containers — open an interactive terminal inside a container (shell configurable via sidekick-docker.exec.defaultShell)
• Connection awareness — status-bar connection indicator, a disconnected banner with one-click Retry when the daemon goes away, and a "Retry Connection" action in the Containers view
• Mouse-friendly — click rows and tabs to select, right-click a container row for its action menu, clickable status-bar hint chips
• Accessible — ARIA roles, labels, and live regions; tabs and overlays reachable by keyboard
• Workspace-aware Compose — detect workspace projects, preserve recorded override files for lifecycle actions, and display running/total replicas for scaled services
• Recovery controls — retry failed detail loads and streams; partial refresh warnings retain the last successful resource data
• SSH connections — the packaged extension includes the SSH transport for DOCKER_HOST=ssh://user@host

Tab and Shift+Tab move between webview controls, and modal dialogs keep focus inside their controls until closed. Selecting another item preserves the detail tab. Filtering or deleting the selection chooses the first visible item, or clears the selection when nothing matches. Pinned comparison panes and Patterns update as new logs arrive.

Requirements

• VSCode >= 1.109
• Docker running and accessible
• Node.js >= 22.12 (for building from source)

Architecture

The extension uses a webview panel to render the dashboard UI. The extension host (Node.js) communicates with the webview (browser) via postMessage() with a typed message protocol:

• Extension side (src/extension.ts) — activates on startup (onStartupFinished) to register commands and populate the Containers tree and status bar; creates the DockerDashboardProvider
• Provider (src/providers/DockerDashboardProvider.ts) — manages the webview lifecycle, handles Docker API calls via sidekick-docker-shared
• Webview (out/webview/dashboard.js) — renders the dashboard UI, sends user actions back to the extension
• Message types (src/types/messages.ts) — typed request/response messages between extension and webview

Documentation

Full documentation is available at the docs site.

See Also

Sidekick Agent Hub — Multi-provider AI coding agent monitor. Real-time visibility into Claude Code, OpenCode, and Codex CLI sessions with token tracking, context management, and session intelligence. Available as a TUI on npm and a VS Code extension.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup instructions and guidelines.

License

MIT