The extension wraps the observer binary — a small, local Go service
that watches your AI tools' log files and exposes a dashboard. The
binary either downloads automatically on first activation (~21 MB
from GitHub Releases) or uses one you've installed elsewhere
(npm install -g @superbased/observer works too).
2. Verify your install
Open the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / ⌘⇧P) and run:
Observer: Doctor
A terminal opens with a health-check. All four lines should show ✅.
If anything fails, the error tells you what to fix.
3. Start the daemon
Two paths — pick whichever fits your workflow:
Option A — Let the extension manage it for you (recommended for
most users)
Open Settings (Ctrl+, / ⌘,)
Search "observer.daemon.mode"
Change it from detect to auto
The daemon now starts automatically with VS Code and stops cleanly
when you close it.
Option B — Start it yourself in a terminal
observer start
Keep that terminal open. The extension attaches to it automatically.
4. Open the dashboard
Observer: Open Dashboard
Or click the spend indicator in the bottom-right status bar
($(graph) $0.00 until your AI tools generate activity).
The full React analytics dashboard renders inside a VS Code editor
tab. This is where you see your metrics. Nine sections, all
linked to your real captured activity:
Tab
Shows
Overview
Today's spend, top model, burn rate, month projection.
Sessions
Every AI coding session with cost, duration, tool — drill into action-by-action timelines.
Schema-driven editor for every config knob in ~/.observer/config.toml.
5. Capture an AI session
Open a terminal in VS Code. Click the down-arrow next to the
+ in the terminal panel → choose "AI Coding Tool
(Observer-proxied)". The new terminal already has
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, OPENAI_BASE_URL, and ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH=true
exported.
Run your AI CLI from that terminal:
claude # or: cursor-agent, codex, cline-cli, gh copilot, …
Everything routes through the local proxy. Within ~30 seconds your
session shows up in the dashboard with accurate token counts
(not the ~3.4× over-bill you get from non-proxied JSONL adapters).
🎯 What you get
Surface
What it does
How to access
Status bar
Today's spend at a glance, polled every 60s. Hover for delta vs yesterday, top model, burn rate, month projection.
Bottom-right corner. Click → open dashboard.
Sidebar
Four trees — Today, Sessions, Discovery, Costs (7d) — refreshed automatically.
Click the SuperBased icon in the activity bar (left rail).
Dashboard webview
The full React analytics SPA in an editor tab. Same surface as http://127.0.0.1:8081/.
Observer: Open Dashboard or status-bar click.
File freshness
Small dot in the file explorer next to files your AI tools touched in the last 24h. Hover shows last-read-by, edit count, stale re-reads flagged.
Just open a file — visible immediately.
Notifications
Budget breach (80% of monthly cap) + watcher-lag warnings. Deduped so they don't nag.
Automatic. Tunable thresholds in settings.
Terminal profile
"AI Coding Tool (Observer-proxied)" — pre-exports proxy env vars so AI CLIs launched from it route through observer.
Terminal panel → dropdown next to + → pick the profile.
Instruction-file CodeLens
"Refresh from Observer learnings" + "Preview suggestions" on CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / .cursorrules. Auto-updates the file from your captured patterns.
Open one of those three files — appears at the top.
Get Started walkthrough
7-step interactive tour.
Help → Welcome → "Get Started with SuperBased Observer".
⚙️ Settings
Setting
Default
Purpose
observer.daemon.mode
detect
detect attaches only; managed spawns + kills with the editor; auto attaches if a daemon is running, otherwise spawns.
observer.binary.path
empty
Absolute path to override binary auto-detection.
observer.dashboard.port
8081
Where the dashboard listens.
observer.proxy.port
8820
Where the API reverse proxy listens.
observer.statusBar.enabled
true
Today-spend status bar item.
🎛️ Common commands
Open the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / ⌘⇧P) and type Observer:
Command
Use it when
Observer: Open Dashboard
You want to see your metrics.
Observer: Doctor
Something seems off — health-check the install.
Observer: Start Daemon
You picked managed or auto mode and need to (re)start.
Observer: Copy Proxy Env Vars
You want to set up proxy routing in an existing terminal.
Observer: Refresh All Trees
The sidebar feels stale.
🤖 Supported AI tools
Claude Code (CLI + IDE) — via proxy + MCP server
Cursor (CLI + IDE) — via proxy + agent-transcripts
Codex / Codex CLI — via proxy
Cline + Roo Code + Continue — via proxy
GitHub Copilot CLI — via JSONL adapter (no proxy hook available upstream)
Cowork + Opencode + Openclaw + Pi — via JSONL adapter
Zero telemetry. Respects telemetry.telemetryLevel. No usage
reporting, no crash analytics, no session beacons.
No outbound network calls at runtime. The only network traffic
the extension ever generates is the first-install binary download
from GitHub Releases when no observer is found locally. After
that, all communication is to 127.0.0.1:<dashboard.port> on
your workspace host.
No data leaves your machine. Every byte captured stays in
~/.observer/observer.db.
Codespaces / Remote-SSH / WSL2 / Dev Containers all work via
portMapping — data still doesn't cross any wire that wasn't
already part of your VS Code remote-dev session.
