Notebook Cell Id
Point your coding agent at an exact notebook cell: "Review cell e66c99c5",
"Fix cell 8d3f2a1c".
Every cell since nbformat 4.5 carries a stable id, but VS Code doesn't surface it
anywhere in its UI. This extension puts it in each cell's status bar and makes it one
click to copy.
Why
When you ask an agent (or a colleague) to fix or review one cell, referencing it by id
beats every alternative:
- Accurate. The badge shows the same
id field the agent sees when it opens the
.ipynb JSON, so the reference resolves to exactly one cell. Ids survive re-ordering,
inserting, and deleting cells — "the third code cell" and cell 3 don't.
- Token-efficient. 8 characters instead of pasting the cell's whole contents into
the chat to identify it.
- Round-trippable. VS Code's
ipynb serializer preserves ids on save, so the id you
copied yesterday still points at the same cell today.
Features
- A right-aligned status bar item on every cell:
⧉ [#5](https://github.com/hannody/vscode-notebook-cell-id/issues/5) e66c99c5 (index + cell id).
- Click it to copy the id.
- Commands from the Command Palette, acting on the selected cell (the extension adds
nothing to the cell toolbar or its
... menu — those stay exactly as VS Code ships them):
Notebook: Copy Cell Id → e66c99c5
Notebook: Copy Cell Id with Notebook Path → article_mat/v2_nb/step_3_.ipynb cell e66c99c5
Notebook: Find Cell by Id → prompts for an id, then selects and scrolls to that
cell. Bound to Ctrl+Alt+F (Cmd+Alt+F on macOS) while a notebook
is focused — Ctrl+F is left alone since VS Code uses it for the built-in
text find widget. Also available as a button in the notebook's top toolbar, next to
+Code / +Markdown:
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Notes |
notebookCellId.showStatusBarItem |
true |
Turn the per-cell badge off, keep the commands. |
notebookCellId.statusBarLabel |
index-and-id |
Also accepts id or index. |
Requirements
Cells only carry ids in nbformat 4.5 and newer. Older notebooks show no badge; re-saving
them in a current Jupyter or VS Code will add ids. Works on jupyter-notebook and
interactive documents.
How it works
VS Code's built-in ipynb extension deserializes the nbformat cell id onto
NotebookCell.metadata.id, and writes it back on save. The extension reads that through
a NotebookCellStatusBarItemProvider, so the badge tracks cells as you add, delete, and
move them — no file parsing, nothing to keep in sync. Some older VS Code builds nested the
value under metadata.custom.id; both are checked.
Development
See DEVELOPMENT.md for how to run and test this locally.
License
MIT
