claude-statusline — VS Code Extension

Show the Claude Code agent state from the v3 statusline workspace in the VS Code status bar. The extension spawns the claude-statusline busd consumer binary as a child process and pipes its stdout into a status bar item.

Status bar item only. No editor, no side panel, no webview.

How it works

On activation the extension spawns the claude-statusline binary (it implements the Consumer trait and already subscribes to busd).
Each line the binary prints is parsed by parseLine (a pure function in src/parseLine.ts).
The status bar text is updated to the current state (IDLE / THINKING / EXECUTING / ERROR) with the [session:...] tag and elapsed/cost detail carried through verbatim.

Prerequisites

The claude-statusline binary must be reachable on $PATH (or its absolute path configured in settings). Build it from this workspace:

cargo build --release -p claude-statusline
# binary lives at target/release/claude-statusline

Also required: a running claude-busd instance. See the top-level v3 README.

Build the extension

cd v3/vscode-extension
npm install
npm run compile   # emits out/extension.js + out/test/*.test.js
npm test          # runs parseLine unit tests

Package & install

# One-time: install vsce globally.
npm install -g @vscode/vsce

# Produce a .vsix from v3/vscode-extension/
cd v3/vscode-extension
vsce package
# -> claude-statusline-0.1.0.vsix

# Install it into VS Code
code --install-extension claude-statusline-0.1.0.vsix

To distribute internally, copy the .vsix to teammates and run code --install-extension claude-statusline-0.1.0.vsix on their machines (Extensions -> "Install from VSIX..." works too).

Configuration

Open VS Code Settings (Cmd+, / Ctrl+,) and search for "claude statusline". The extension contributes two settings:

Setting	Default	Description
`claudeStatusline.binaryPath`	`claude-statusline`	Absolute path or `$PATH` lookup for the binary. Set this to e.g. `/Users/me/gitlab/ai/claude-code/statusline/v3/target/release/claude-statusline` if you don't want it on `$PATH`.
`claudeStatusline.statusBarText`	`Claude: $(loading~spin)`	Placeholder text shown while waiting for the first line of stdout.

Example settings.json:

{
  "claudeStatusline.binaryPath": "/Users/me/gitlab/ai/claude-code/statusline/v3/target/release/claude-statusline"
}

Troubleshooting

Status bar shows $(warning) Claude: exited (1) -- the binary path is wrong or the busd socket is unreachable. Hover the status bar item for details.
Status bar stuck on the placeholder -- claude-busd is not running, or this user is not subscribed. Check claude-busd logs.

Development

npm run watch -- incremental TypeScript compile on save.
npm test -- node --test against the compiled out/test/parseLine.test.js.
The activation path (spawning the binary, wiring events) is not unit- tested; it's exercised manually by launching VS Code with the extension loaded.

Claude Code Statusline

decard