Terminal Cockpit

Save and run your favourite terminal commands from the sidebar — with their arguments.

Most command-runner extensions give you buttons that fire a fixed string. Cockpit gives each command real, editable arguments — text boxes, dropdowns, on/off switches, multi-select lists, and dropdowns whose options come from a shell command you choose: your live git branches, your docker containers, your Kubernetes namespaces.

▼ Deploy                           ▶
    Environment      staging       ✎
    Release tag      v2.4.1        ✎
    Only packages    api, web      ✎
    Skip migrations  off           ✎
    Dry run          on            ✎
▶ Run tests                        ▶
▶ Tail container logs              ▶

Click a value to change it. Click ▶ to run. Your choices are remembered, so tomorrow it's one click — not a paragraph copied out of a README with the branch name half-edited.

Why

If your team's runbook looks like this:

npm run deploy -- --env staging --tag v2.4.1 --only api,web --skip-migrations --dry-run

…then nobody types it correctly from memory. They copy it out of a doc, edit the tag, forget --dry-run, and find out afterwards. Cockpit turns that line into a form, so the only thing left to get wrong is the actual decision — which value to pick — not the syntax around it.

What you get

See it in action

Turn a command you already run into a form, without writing any config by hand — paste the command line, tick which parts should stay editable, pick a control for each.

Dropdowns backed by a real command — branches, tags, running containers, whatever stdout gives you, refreshed every time you open the picker.

Share a config like any other file — export it, hand it to a teammate, import it into another project. Comments and formatting survive the round trip.

Getting started

1. Open the Cockpit icon in the activity bar.
2. Click Add command and paste a command line you already run.
3. Tick which parts should stay editable, and choose a control for each.

Cockpit writes the config for you. There is no JSON to learn before you get value out of it.

Already have a config from another project? Use Import Config from the "..." menu at the top of the sidebar — it merges the imported commands in (skipping any id you already have) or replaces the config outright, your choice. Export Config does the reverse: saves a folder's config, comments and formatting intact, to a file you can hand to a teammate or another project.

Configuration

Commands live in .vscode/cockpit.jsonc, so they're shared with your team through version control. The file has a JSON Schema attached — you get autocomplete, hover documentation and validation while editing.

{
  "version": 1,
  "commands": [
    {
      "label": "Deploy",
      "group": "Release",
      "icon": "cloud-upload",
      "command": "npm run deploy --",
      "confirm": true,
      "resetAfterRun": true,
      "args": [
        {
          "id": "env",
          "kind": "pick",
          "label": "Environment",
          "flag": "--env",
          "default": "staging",
          "options": ["staging", "production"],
        },
        {
          "id": "tag",
          "kind": "shellPick",
          "label": "Release tag",
          "flag": "--tag",
          "command": "git tag --sort=-creatordate",
          "required": true,
        },
        {
          "id": "packages",
          "kind": "multiPick",
          "label": "Only packages",
          "flag": "--only",
          "options": ["api", "web", "worker", "shared", "cli"],
        },
        {
          "id": "dryRun",
          "kind": "flag",
          "label": "Dry run",
          "flag": "--dry-run",
          "default": true,
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
}

See examples/monorepo.jsonc for a complete config covering every argument type.

Argument types

Omit flag to pass the value positionally. pick/multiPick options can carry their own "default": true instead of repeating the value in the arg's own "default".

Command options

Settings

Quoting

Arguments are handed to VS Code as quoted tokens, so a value containing spaces survives PowerShell, cmd, bash and zsh without you escaping anything. Commands run as VS Code tasks, appearing in the normal terminal panel with your usual shell and environment.

Development

bun install
bun run build     # or: bun run watch

Press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host with Cockpit loaded.

bun run check     # typecheck
bun run smoke     # loads the built bundle and calls activate()
bun run package   # produce a .vsix

Shipping a new version? See RELEASING.md for the full versioning, packaging and publishing steps.

License

All rights reserved — see LICENSE. Source is visible for transparency; copying, modifying or redistributing it isn't permitted without permission. Bundles jsonc-parser (MIT, Microsoft) — its notice is preserved in full inside the LICENSE file.