Lime for VS Code

Lime is an AI coding assistant that lives where you work. A streaming chat sidebar with the full agentic loop, editor surfaces (Code Actions, CodeLens, SCM, inline completions), and a terminal companion for running lime in your shell while VS Code handles diff review.

Quick start

Install the engine. The extension talks to a local lime binary over stdio — install it once and put it on your PATH. The Get started with Lime walkthrough has download links and tells you how to point the extension at a custom path.
Open the Lime sidebar from the Activity Bar (the lime tile).
Send a message. The first message lazily spawns the engine; from there you have streaming markdown, slash commands, file mentions, permission prompts, session history, and fork.

You can also keep using lime in the terminal — VS Code will detect it and route diff review, selection context, and diagnostics to the editor automatically.

What you get

Streaming markdown with VS Code-themed syntax highlighting.
/slash autocomplete sourced live from the engine.
@file mentions backed by vscode.workspace.findFiles.
Permission prompts with rule-pattern picker — pick bash(git:*) or write_file(src/*), not just the bare tool name.
Session list, continue, fork (with optional branch name).
Tool-call cards updated in place when results land. bash / bash_session output renders in a real VS Code Pseudoterminal with ANSI colors and native scrollback.

Editor surfaces

Code Actions on diagnostics ("Ask Lime to fix") and selections ("Refactor with Lime", "Explain selection").
CodeLens above functions — Explain · Test · Refactor (off by default; flip lime.codeLens.enabled).
Source Control group "Edited by Lime" tracking files the agent touched in the current session, with one-click diff vs HEAD.
Inline completions via a fast single-shot bridge RPC (off by default).

Copilot Chat integration

@lime chat participant in the built-in VS Code Chat panel (off by default; requires GitHub Copilot Chat).
Read-only Lime tools (lime_grep, lime_glob, lime_read, lime_lsp) registered as vscode.lm tools so other Copilot agents can call them.

MCP

Lime's configured MCP servers are surfaced to VS Code via the McpServerDefinitionProvider API — Copilot Chat sees the same catalog without duplicating .vscode/mcp.json.

IDE companion (terminal users)

Per-window WebSocket server, lockfile-discovered by the lime CLI.
Bearer-token gated upgrade, localhost-only.
The CLI delegates diff review, selection access, and diagnostics to VS Code via the registered MCP tools.

Requirements

VS Code 1.95 or newer.
A local lime binary (the extension does not bundle one). The walkthrough has install instructions; you can also point at any custom path via lime.engine.path.

Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
`lime.engine.path`	`lime`	Path / PATH name of the engine binary
`lime.engine.extraArgs`	`[]`	Extra args inserted before `bridge`
`lime.engine.cwd`	(empty)	Working directory for the engine
`lime.codeLens.enabled`	`false`	Show Explain/Test/Refactor lenses
`lime.editorActions.autoSend`	`true`	Auto-send code-action prompts vs. drop into composer
`lime.inlineCompletions.enabled`	`false`	Enable Lime as an inline completion provider
`lime.inlineCompletions.debounceMs`	`300`	Inline completion debounce window
`lime.chat.participantEnabled`	`false`	Register `@lime` in Copilot Chat
`lime.mcp.shareWithEditor`	`true`	Surface lime's MCP servers to VS Code
`lime.telemetry.enabled`	`true`	Honor `#telemetry.telemetryLevel#` for Lime events
`lime.ide.companionEnabled`	`true`	Expose the editor to a CLI lime over WS
`lime.diff.autoCloseOnAccept`	`true`	Close the proposed-edit diff tab on save/reject
`lime.bridge.serverUrl`	(empty)	WebSocket URL for VS Code for the Web

Privacy & telemetry

Telemetry is double-gated: the global VS Code #telemetry.telemetryLevel# setting and lime.telemetry.enabled must both be on. Events carry counts, durations, status enums, and tool families — never prompts, file contents, paths, session IDs, model IDs, or tool arguments / outputs.

Open the Lime output channel to see exactly what would be sent.

Trust model

The extension declares limited support for both untrusted and virtual workspaces:

In an untrusted workspace Lime still works, but lime.ide.lockfileDir is restricted because it can change where the companion publishes its lockfile.
In a virtual workspace the companion is disabled (it requires a local CLI process).

Edits and shell commands run through the engine and are gated by the permission prompt; nothing escapes the agent loop unconfirmed.

Support

Use the Q&A tab on this extension's Marketplace page for questions and feedback.

License

MIT — see the bundled LICENSE file.

Lime Code

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