Local Ai Coder is a Visual Studio Code extension that embeds a fully local AI coding partner directly inside the editor. The assistant reads your project, drafts step-by-step plans, proposes shell/PowerShell commands, and prepares file changes—all of which are executed only after you explicitly approve them. No external APIs are called at runtime; inference is handled by a locally running Ollama daemon that you control.
Key capabilities
Workspace awareness – Streams the relevant files from the open workspace into the prompt while respecting size limits and ignoring common build artifacts, with controls to fine-tune which folders are excluded.
Local-first inference – Streams responses from an Ollama model running on your machine. Choose any Ollama model identifier in the extension settings and the assistant will download and serve it locally.
Collaborative reasoning – Orchestrates a context scout, planner, coder, reviewer, QA analyst, safety auditor, and verifier so each stage critiques and augments the plan before you see it.
Embedded QA and safety – The QA role populates test expectations while the safety auditor flags risky commands or file operations and adds mitigation steps automatically.
Role-specific models – Choose distinct Ollama models for planning/thinking and hands-on coding directly from the chat view settings.
Custom prompt styles – Assign different prompt builders to the context scout, planner, coder, reviewer, QA, safety auditor, and verifier so every role reasons with instructions tuned to its responsibilities.
Automated JSON verification – Route every response through a verification model that ensures the final plan is valid JSON matching the required schema and catches semantic mismatches across steps, commands, and file actions.
Guarded shell access – The assistant can suggest PowerShell or shell commands. Each command is shown to you with full context and runs only after you press Approve.
Safe file operations – File creations, edits, and deletions are surfaced as actionable items with previews and explicit confirmation prompts before changes are applied to disk.
Interruptible workflows – Track live progress for shell commands and file operations right inside the chat view and cancel long-running plans with a single click.
Conversation memory – Maintains a rolling, persisted conversation history so follow-up questions benefit from earlier context—even across reloads. Reset the memory at any time with the Local Ai Coder: Reset Conversation command.
