Claude Code Orbit

A patch companion for Anthropic's Claude Code VS Code extension.

Better session management, status indicators, search, filters, and a one-click YOLO mode — applied on top of the official extension, not as a fork.

What Orbit gives you

Orbit downloads the official anthropic.claude-code VSIX from the Marketplace, surgically patches the bundled webview, and installs the result. The patched version looks and works exactly like the original — plus everything below.

Install

1. Grab the latest VSIX from builds/
2. In VS Code: Ctrl+Shift+P → Extensions: Install from VSIX… → pick the file
3. Click the Claude Code Orbit icon in the activity bar
4. Hit Enable Orbit — Orbit downloads the latest official VSIX, patches it, installs the result
5. Click Restart Claude Code when prompted

Requirements: VS Code 1.94+ and Python 3 on PATH (the patcher runs locally on your machine).

YOLO mode

A ⚡ lightning-bolt button lives in the sessions panel header. Click it to flip permission prompts off.

• Off: dim, blends in. Permission prompts behave normally.
• On: orange-tinted background and bright orange bolt — hard to miss, hard to forget about.
• Live-applies to every loaded session immediately; new sessions default to bypassPermissions while it's on.
• Always starts off on every reload — opt in deliberately each session.

A tour of the patches

Pin & Star sessions

Right-click any session for the pin / star / archive menu, or use the hover actions. Sessions self-sort into collapsible Starred → Pinned → Active → Archived sections with counts in each header.

Archive instead of delete

The default hover action is Archive, not Delete. Archived sessions sink to a collapsible folder at the bottom; only there does the permanent-delete action appear. Hard to delete a session by accident.

Search

Click the 🔍 in the sessions header — an inline search row slides down. Filters session titles live as you type, across every section. Esc to dismiss.

Filter

Filter by type (Pinned / Starred / Running / Waiting), age (Last hour / 24h / 7d / 30d), and a Hide → Untitled chats toggle that keeps empty new-session rows out of your sidebar (on by default). Click the filter button again to dismiss.

Account & Usage

The $ button in the sessions header opens Claude Code's Account & Usage panel directly — no command palette, no slash command. Shows your auth method, plan, and rolling usage windows.

Resizable & collapsible

Drag the left edge of the sessions panel to resize. Width is clamped to 55% of the container so it can't push the chat off-screen. Toggle the panel off with the sidebar button in the top toolbar — the chat snaps back to full width.

Restore stock

Click Restore stock in the Orbit sidebar at any time. Orbit downloads the unmodified Marketplace VSIX, installs it via file URI (skipping the marketplace install dialog), and prompts you to restart. Your sessions, settings, and chat history are untouched — Orbit only modifies the webview's UI layer.

Compatibility

If a Claude Code release breaks one of the patch anchors, the patcher refuses to install rather than producing a broken extension. 48 anchors are verified before any output VSIX is written.

License

The Orbit wrapper is MIT-licensed. Patches operate on Anthropic's distribution, which remains © Anthropic PBC under its own Commercial Terms of Service. Orbit does not redistribute the Anthropic VSIX — it downloads it from the Marketplace on the user's machine at install time.