Copilot Terminal Tools

A VS Code extension that provides intelligent terminal management for GitHub Copilot and AI assistants. The primary benefit is preventing terminal spawning chaos - instead of creating new terminals for every command, this extension allows AI agents to reuse named terminals, maintaining clean workspace organization and process continuity.

🎯 Key Benefits

• Prevents Terminal Spam: Stop AI agents from creating dozens of disposable terminals
• Organized Workflow: Group related commands in appropriately named terminals
• Process Continuity: Maintain context between commands in the same terminal
• Resource Efficiency: Reuse terminals instead of spawning new processes
• Better Debugging: Named terminals make it easy to track command history and output

🚀 Features

Core Functionality

• Named Terminal Management: Create, list, and delete terminals with meaningful names
• Smart Command Execution: Send commands to existing terminals or create them automatically
• Output Capture: Execute commands and capture their output, errors, and execution details
• Process Control: Cancel running commands with proper signal handling
• GitHub Copilot Integration: Provides language model tools for AI-driven development

Available Tools

📋 Recommended Terminal Names

Organize your development workflow with these suggested terminal names:

• dev-server - Development servers (npm run dev, python manage.py runserver, cargo run)
• build - Build operations (npm run build, cargo build, dotnet build)
• test - Testing commands (npm test, pytest, cargo test)
• package-manager - Dependencies (npm install, pip install, cargo add)
• git - Version control operations
• docker - Container management
• database - Database operations
• cloud - Cloud CLI commands
• general - File operations and utilities
• scripts - Automation and custom scripts

🛠️ Installation

From VS Code Marketplace

1. Open VS Code
2. Go to Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X)
3. Search for "Copilot Terminal Tools"
4. Click Install

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest .vsix file from releases
2. In VS Code: Ctrl+Shift+P → "Extensions: Install from VSIX..."
3. Select the downloaded file

💡 Usage Examples

With GitHub Copilot Chat

Instead of Copilot creating multiple terminals:

❌ Before: "run npm install" → Creates Terminal 1
❌ Before: "start dev server" → Creates Terminal 2  
❌ Before: "run tests" → Creates Terminal 3

With this extension:

✅ After: Commands go to organized, named terminals
📁 package-manager: npm install, npm update
🖥️ dev-server: npm run dev (keeps running)
🧪 test: npm test, npm run test:watch

Manual Commands

Use the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P):

• Terminal Tools: List Named Terminals - See all your named terminals
• Terminal Tools: Create Named Terminal - Create a new terminal with a specific name
• Terminal Tools: Send Command to Terminal - Execute commands in named terminals
• Terminal Tools: Delete Terminal - Clean up unused terminals
• Terminal Tools: Cancel Command - Stop running processes

⚙️ Configuration

The extension works out of the box with no configuration required. When using the tools:

• Terminal Name: Choose descriptive names that match your workflow
• Working Directory: Optionally specify where commands should run
• Shell Path: Use custom shells if needed (defaults to system shell)

🔄 How It Works

1. AI Request: Copilot or other AI wants to run a command
2. Tool Selection: Extension provides the sendCommand tool instead of generic terminal access
3. Terminal Resolution:
   • If named terminal exists → Use it
   • If not → Create it automatically
4. Command Execution: Run the command in the appropriate terminal
5. Output Handling: Capture and return results to the AI

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for detailed guidelines on how to contribute to this project.

Development Setup

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/mijur/vsc-terminal-tools.git
cd vsc-terminal-tools

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development
npm run watch

Testing

# Run tests
npm test

# Watch mode for development
npm run watch-tests

📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🐛 Issues & Support

• Bug Reports: GitHub Issues
• Feature Requests: GitHub Discussions
• Documentation: Wiki

🔗 Related

• GitHub Copilot - AI pair programmer
• VS Code API - Extension development docs

Made with ❤️ for developers who want organized, efficient AI-assisted workflows