Claude Code Coach

Workflow coaching for Claude Code developers, right inside VS Code.

Independent, community project. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to Anthropic. "Claude" and "Claude Code" are Anthropic's products; this extension is a client that talks to a separate, locally-run companion application.

What is Claude Code Coach?

Claude Code Coach is a local-first desktop app that observes your real Claude Code CLI activity (via the hooks Claude Code itself supports) and surfaces workflow coaching — prompt quality feedback, environment awareness, runtime session signals — without ever sending your project to a cloud service.

This extension connects VS Code to that already-running desktop application over a loopback (127.0.0.1) connection, so you can see your Coach's live status, connection state, and real runtime/session information without leaving the editor.

Features (this release)

• A status bar item showing the Coach's real connection state: Connecting, Ready, Offline, Attention, or Paused — never a fabricated or demo state.
• A Coach panel (Claude Code Coach: Open Coach in the Command Palette) showing:
  • Connection status and your current workspace
  • Runtime state (are Claude Code hooks configured, last event time)
  • Current Coaching: the single most relevant live coaching signal for your session right now (context health, search-first workflow, verification, etc.) — the same signal vocabulary the desktop app uses, not a separate or simplified one
  • Session summary (prompts, tool calls, edits, context health) for the current workspace, when a real session has been observed
  • A basic environment summary (Skills/Agents/CLAUDE.md/MCP counts)
• Claude Code Coach: Inspect Prompt: type a prompt and see a real Prompt Inspector pass — quality analysis, a suggested rewrite (with a one-click Copy Suggested Prompt), and an Approach Advisor recommendation — run by the same deterministic analyzer the desktop app uses, not a separate or simplified copy. Any Skill/Agent file the recommendation references can be opened directly (read-only) from the panel.
• Claude Code Coach: Pause Coaching / Resume Coaching, plus claudeCodeCoach.coaching.notificationsEnabled and .notificationLevel settings (highOnly / highAndMedium / off) to control native notifications independently of the panel.
• Claude Code Coach: Open Desktop Coach: tells you how to start the desktop app yourself — VS Code cannot locate or launch it automatically, so this is guidance, never an automatic startup.
• Live updates: the panel and status bar refresh automatically when new Claude Code activity is observed, via a lightweight local signal file plus a fallback poll — no need to manually refresh.
• Automatic reconnection: if the desktop app restarts, or wasn't running yet when VS Code started, the extension picks it up on its own.
• Bundled Coach service, with automatic startup (Windows x64): on supported Windows x64 systems, the extension ships its own self-contained Coach service and starts it automatically in the background when no service (standalone or desktop) is already reachable — no Python install and no desktop app required to get basic status/coaching. A service you already run yourself, or the desktop app, is always detected and reused instead of starting a second one; a stale leftover from a crashed service is detected and recovered from automatically. Governed by the claudeCodeCoach.autoStartService setting (default on). Not available on macOS, Linux, or non-x64 Windows — those still require the desktop app or a standalone service you start yourself.

Not yet implemented in this release: Skill/Agent creation and Workshop Mode have no VS Code UI yet — creating a Skill/Agent (viewing an existing one's file is supported, see above) and taking the Workshop course remain desktop-only for now.

How it works

VS Code Extension
        ↓  HTTP (127.0.0.1, token-authenticated)
Local Coach Service (embedded in the desktop app)
        ↓
Claude Code Coach Desktop Application

The extension is a client. All intelligence — prompt analysis, environment discovery, runtime interpretation — lives in the desktop application; the extension only displays what that application reports.

Requirements

• On Windows x64, the extension can start its own bundled Coach service automatically — nothing else needs to be running first (see Features above). On any other platform or architecture, the Claude Code Coach desktop application must be running: this extension has no coaching intelligence of its own without either the bundled service or the desktop app behind it.
• Windows, macOS, or Linux with VS Code ^1.85.0 or later (the desktop app itself is developed and verified primarily on Windows).

Install

Install Claude Code Coach from the VS Code Marketplace. This release is distributed on the pre-release channel — in the Extensions view, open the extension's page and choose Switch to Pre-Release Version (or install it directly with the .vsix produced by Development):

code --install-extension claude-code-coach-0.3.1.vsix

Quick Start

1. Start the Claude Code Coach desktop application.
2. Open a project folder in VS Code.
3. Check the status bar (bottom right) — it should read Coach: Ready within a few seconds.
4. Run Claude Code Coach: Open Coach from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) to see the panel.

Desktop Coach Dependency

This extension requires the Claude Code Coach desktop application to be running on the same machine. It does not implement any workflow coaching intelligence itself.

If the desktop app is not running (or hasn't started listening yet), the status bar shows:

Coach: Offline

and the panel explains: "Coach service is not running. Start the Claude Code Coach desktop app to connect."

Once the desktop app starts, the extension detects it automatically — usually within a few seconds — with no VS Code restart or reload needed.

Privacy

• Local-first. The extension only ever talks to 127.0.0.1 — never any external server.
• No cloud AI API calls are made by this extension or the desktop Coach it connects to.
• No telemetry. Nothing about your usage is collected or transmitted anywhere, by this extension or the desktop app.
• No remote prompt upload. Your prompts and code never leave your machine through this integration.
• Environment data shown in the panel (Skills/Agents/CLAUDE.md/MCP counts) has already been redacted for secrets by the desktop app before it ever reaches this extension.

These claims describe the actual current implementation, not aspirational goals — the full technical detail behind each one is documented in docs/VSCODE_INTEGRATION.md in the project's source repository.

Security

• The desktop app's local service binds to 127.0.0.1 only — never an externally-reachable address.
• Every request requires a random X-Coach-Token header, generated fresh each time the desktop app starts and shared only via a local discovery file with the same file permissions as the app's own database.
• This token is defense-in-depth against another local process or user on a shared machine — it is not a defense against a malicious process already running under your own Windows account, which could read the discovery file directly. That limitation is inherent to any unauthenticated-by-OS-user loopback service, on any platform.
• The extension never executes arbitrary code, shell commands, or file writes through this connection — every endpoint is read-only.

Screenshots

All screenshots below are real captures from the actual extension running against the actual desktop app (not mockups).

Connected, showing real workspace and environment data:

Offline — desktop app not running:

A real, live runtime session:

Known Limitations

• On platforms other than Windows x64, requires the desktop application; there is no standalone mode there.
• No real-time push — updates arrive via a local file-change signal plus a periodic fallback poll, typically sub-second in practice but not a hard real-time guarantee.
• Multi-root VS Code workspaces use only the first folder as the active project.
• No Prompt Inspector, Approach Advisor, Skill/Agent creation, or Workshop Mode UI yet — desktop-only for now.
• The bundled, auto-starting Coach service is Windows x64 only; there is no bundled service for macOS, Linux, or non-x64 Windows.

Troubleshooting

Status bar stuck on "Offline" Confirm the desktop app is actually running. Check that %USERPROFILE%\.claude_code_coach\service.json exists — if it's missing, the desktop app's local service likely failed to bind its port (check the desktop app's own log for a "could not bind" warning, usually because another process already holds it).

Panel shows stale data Run Claude Code Coach: Open Coach again to force a refresh, or check claudeCodeCoach.pollIntervalSeconds in Settings isn't set unreasonably high.

Nothing happens after installing Reload the VS Code window (Developer: Reload Window) once after a fresh install.

Development

cd vscode-extension
npm install
npm run compile

Press F5 (with vscode-extension/ open in VS Code) to launch an Extension Development Host with the extension loaded.

Build

npm run compile

Package

npx vsce package

Produces claude-code-coach-<version>.vsix in this directory. See docs/MARKETPLACE_BETA_CHECKLIST.md before distributing it further.

Tests

npm test

Release Process

This extension is published to the VS Code Marketplace as ShashankHS.claude-code-coach. New feature work ships first on the pre-release channel for manual validation before being promoted to the default (stable) channel. Publisher identity (ShashankHS), the public repository (https://github.com/Shashankhs3/claude-code-coach), and the license (MIT) have all been decided. See docs/MARKETPLACE_BETA_CHECKLIST.md for the checklist behind the 0.3.0 release.

Support

See SUPPORT.md for how to report issues and known limitations.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Copyright (c) 2026 Shashank H S.