Suggests research papers from Papers with Code based on what you're working on. They appear in a Papers tab in the activity bar.
How it works
Once every papers.intervalHours (shared across all VS Code windows), the scout collects your recent work from each git repo in the workspace:
your commit subjects and touched files from the last papers.lookbackDays
uncommitted changes
open kanban cards from .vscode/kanban.json
It runs headless Claude Code with only read-only file tools (Read, Grep, Glob) and the Papers with Code MCP server. Claude picks research topics behind the work and searches the catalog.
Claude returns only paper ids. The scout then fetches the titles, links and code repos straight from the catalog, so the feed can't contain made-up papers.
Privacy. Claude reads your files locally, as it does in normal sessions. Only search queries go to Papers with Code, and the prompt requires them to be generic research terms. Show Log and Last Queries lists every query sent.
Use
Click a paper to open it. Hover it to see why it was suggested.
Inline buttons:
open code
star
dismiss (dismissed papers are never suggested again)
Right-click a paper:
More Like This adds related papers from the catalog. This doesn't use Claude.
open on arXiv or Papers with Code
copy the link
Title bar:
Find Papers Now forces a run.
Mark All as Seen
Each run costs a few cents, capped by papers.maxBudgetUsd. papers.model defaults to sonnet.
Requirements
Claude Code, installed and signed in. The extension uses the CLI bundled with the Claude Code extension, then claude on your PATH, or set papers.claudePath.
Python 3.9+. The scout uses only the standard library. On Windows, set papers.pythonPath to python or py if python3 isn't available.
git, for reading your recent commits.
Cost and data
Each scout run is a Claude Code session, billed to your Claude plan or API account. Runs are capped by papers.maxBudgetUsd (default $0.50) and happen at most once every papers.intervalHours (default 24). Set papers.autoRun to false to only run on demand.
Your commit subjects, touched file names, uncommitted changes and open kanban cards are sent to Claude as context, in the same way as a normal Claude Code session.
Only generic search queries are sent to Papers with Code.
The feed is stored in VS Code's global storage as feed.json.
