VS Relay

Give Claude Code hands inside your editor.

This extension exposes your running VSCode workspace to Claude over MCP, so Claude can read editor/diagnostic state, open and edit files, run tasks, drive the debugger, and trigger UI actions — instead of just editing files blind from the terminal.

What Claude can do with it

• See what you see — open files, active editor, current selection, diagnostics (errors/warnings), workspace symbol search.
• Edit and manage files — apply edits, create/delete/rename files, open a file and jump straight to a location (so you can watch the change land).
• Run and debug — list and run tasks, start/stop debug sessions, list active sessions.
• Use the terminal — list terminals, read output, run commands in a named terminal.
• Drive the UI — show messages and quick picks, execute any VSCode command by ID, list commands to discover the right one.

Once installed, these show up as vscode_* tools in Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or any other MCP-compatible client — no manual tool wiring required.

Setup

Install the extension, then open the folder you want Claude to work in. That's it.

On activation, the extension:

1. Starts a local WebSocket server (127.0.0.1:4823 by default) that answers editor/file/run/debug requests using the VSCode API.
2. Spawns its own bundled MCP server alongside it.
3. Automatically adds a vs-relay entry to .mcp.json (Claude Code CLI) and .vscode/mcp.json (VSCode's built-in MCP support, e.g. Copilot Chat) in every open workspace folder, if one isn't already present.

Nothing else needs to be configured by hand. Restart Claude Code (or start a fresh session) in the workspace and vs-relay will show up under /mcp.

The extension must stay running (i.e. the workspace open in VSCode) for tool calls to work — if it's not, Claude gets a clear "could not connect" error instead of hanging.

Using it with Claude Desktop, or another MCP client

Point the client at the extension's bundled server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vs-relay": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/.vscode/extensions/<vs-relay-version>/bundled/mcp-server.cjs"]
    }
  }
}

Or install claude-vscode-mcp-server from npm and run it directly; it connects to ws://127.0.0.1:4823 by default, overridable with the VS_RELAY_PORT environment variable if you changed vsRelay.port below.

Settings

Commands

• VS Relay: Restart Server — restart the WebSocket/MCP server without reloading the window.
• VS Relay: Show Status — check whether the bridge is listening and on which port.

How it works

Claude  <--stdio/HTTP (MCP)-->  bundled MCP server  <--WebSocket (localhost)-->  extension  <--VSCode API-->  VSCode

The extension is self-contained: the MCP server ships bundled inside the .vsix, so there's nothing separate to install or build — just the extension.

Troubleshooting

• "Could not connect" errors from Claude — the extension isn't active in any open VSCode window. Open the workspace in VSCode and check VS Relay: Show Status.
• Port already in use — another instance (or another app) is bound to 4823/4824. Change vsRelay.port / vsRelay.mcpHttpPort in settings and reload.
• vs-relay entry missing from /mcp — check vsRelay.autoConfigureMcp is true, or add the entry manually as shown above.