Orbit MCP & A2A

Orbit brings MCP health monitoring, debug session history, and A2A agent discovery into the VS Code Activity Bar. It is built for developers who run companion agent services locally or on a private network and want their status, sessions, and agent cards visible without leaving the editor.

Features

Health Monitor

Track registered MCP servers from VS Code. The Health Monitor shows server status, latency, uptime, and recent checks from a health-monitor-mcp HTTP service.

Debug Recorder

Create and search debugging sessions backed by debug-recorder-mcp. Use it to record terminal commands, fix attempts, and session context while you work.

A2A Explorer

Browse an A2A registry, inspect agent cards, validate agent-card.json files on save, and scaffold agents through the configured a2a-warp CLI.

MCP Explorer

Review MCP connection status in a dedicated tree view. MCP Explorer reads the same health-monitor-mcp dashboard data as Health Monitor and presents the connections as quick-scannable entries.

Quick Start

1. Install Orbit from the VS Code Marketplace or from a packaged .vsix.
2. Start the companion services you want to use:
   • health-monitor-mcp for Health Monitor and MCP Explorer.
   • debug-recorder-mcp for Debug Recorder.
   • a2a-warp plus its registry server for A2A Explorer.
3. Open Preferences -> Settings -> Orbit and set the endpoints, tokens, and CLI path that match your local environment.
4. Open the Orbit Activity Bar view and use each panel's refresh action to load current data.

Orbit does not start companion services for you. If a panel shows a connection error or an empty state, confirm the matching service is running first.

Requirements

Panels can be enabled or disabled independently from Orbit settings.

Configuration

Open Preferences -> Settings -> Orbit for all settings. The most common first-run settings are:

Example workspace settings:

{
  "orbit.health.endpoint": "http://127.0.0.1:3000",
  "orbit.health.token": "",
  "orbit.debug.endpoint": "http://127.0.0.1:3001",
  "orbit.debug.token": "",
  "orbit.a2a.registryUrl": "http://127.0.0.1:3099",
  "orbit.a2a.cliPath": "a2a-warp"
}

Use VS Code's user settings or workspace settings according to how private your endpoint and token values are. Do not commit personal tokens to a shared workspace.

Commands

Orbit contributes refresh and action commands for the Health, Debug, A2A, MCP, and Sessions views. Most commands are available from the Orbit view title buttons or from the Command Palette under their Orbit category.

Common actions:

• Refresh Health Monitor, Debug Recorder, A2A Explorer, MCP Explorer, or Sessions.
• Add, remove, inspect, and check MCP servers from Health Monitor.
• Start, close, search, and record commands in Debug Recorder sessions.
• Discover agents, validate an agent-card.json, scaffold an agent, and open agent cards from A2A Explorer.

Troubleshooting

A panel shows "Connection error"

Confirm the companion service for that panel is running and reachable from VS Code. Health Monitor and MCP Explorer use orbit.health.endpoint; Debug Recorder uses orbit.debug.endpoint; A2A Explorer uses orbit.a2a.registryUrl.

Requests return unauthorized responses

Check the matching token setting. orbit.health.token and orbit.debug.token are sent as bearer tokens when configured. Remove the token if the companion service does not require authentication, or update it if the service token changed.

The endpoint is wrong or times out

Use the full base URL, including protocol and port, such as http://127.0.0.1:3000. If your service runs in a container or remote environment, make sure the port is forwarded and reachable from VS Code.

A view is empty

Empty views usually mean the service is reachable but has no data yet. Register an MCP server in Health Monitor, start or record a debug session in Debug Recorder, or add agents to the A2A registry. Also check that the panel's *.enabled setting is still turned on.

A2A validation or scaffolding cannot find the CLI

Install a2a-warp or set orbit.a2a.cliPath to the executable's absolute path. Restart VS Code or refresh A2A Explorer after changing the CLI path.

License

Apache-2.0