TaskDev

One place for your dev tasks. One place for your logs. And your AI agent sees them too.

TaskDev is a small VS Code / Cursor / Windsurf extension that supervises your dev tasks - API, frontend, worker, watcher - and gives AI coding agents a real handle on those processes through MCP.

Why TaskDev

AI agents like Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and Windsurf Cascade write code well and read terminal output. What they lack is a stable interface for starting, stopping, and tracking long-running processes. So they spawn duplicates, fight stuck ports, and burn tokens retrying.

TaskDev fixes that with one shared task list:

• A clean sidebar for you, with start/stop/log buttons.
• An MCP server for your agent, with the same view.
• Same processes. Same logs. No more "is the server already running?".
• Tasks live in taskdev.json next to your code, so the whole team gets them.

Plain JSON. Local processes. Local logs. No telemetry. No network listener.

Install

1. Search for TaskDev in your editor's extensions panel, or grab it from the Marketplace or Open VSX.
2. Drop a taskdev.json in your project root (the sidebar's Open task file button creates one for you).
3. Run TaskDev: Install MCP config from the command palette to wire up your agent.

That's it. Hit play on any task and it runs in the background with file-backed logs the agent can read.

Quick Start

Create taskdev.json in your workspace root:

{
  "project": "My App",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "name": "api",
      "command": "dotnet run --project src/Api",
      "detail": "Starts the backend API"
    },
    {
      "name": "ui",
      "type": "npm",
      "command": "npm run dev",
      "cwd": "ui",
      "detail": "Starts the Vite dev server",
      "env": {
        "PORT": "5173"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Open the TaskDev view from the Activity Bar. See examples/taskdev.json for a minimal example.

The Sidebar

Each task row shows an inferred status icon and its name. Status, detail, command, working directory, uptime, and log path remain available in the tooltip. Hover to reveal play, stop, and log buttons. The view title gives you Install MCP config, Open task file, and Refresh.

For array-shaped task lists, drag tasks with the mouse to reorder them. Drop on another task to place it before that task, on a category to move it into that group, or on the project to make it uncategorized. The new order and category persist in taskdev.json. Move task up and Move task down remain available from the context menu. Use Add category… to create, replace, or remove a task's category.

The sidebar refreshes every 10 seconds while tasks are running, every 60 otherwise, and immediately on taskdev.json save. Multi-root workspaces show one node per project.

Full reference on taskdev.dev/docs: Usage Guide for practical setups, Configuration for the schema and MCP tools, and Security for the allow-list.

Daily Use

• Edit taskdev.json. The sidebar updates on save.
• Hit play/stop to control tasks. The log button opens the current run in a normal editor tab. Common ANSI colors and text styles are rendered with editor decorations; unsupported cursor/control sequences are removed. The raw log file remains unchanged.
• Historical logs live in .taskdev/logs/<task>.<timestamp>.log (last 20 kept per task).
• Stopping a task takes down its whole process tree (taskkill /T /F on Windows, SIGTERM to the process group elsewhere).
• Closing the editor stops all running tasks (no orphan dev servers).

TaskDev writes runtime files under your workspace:

.taskdev/state.json
.taskdev/logs/<task-name>.log

Add .taskdev/ to .gitignore. It is local runtime data.

Task File

TaskDev looks for:

taskdev.json
.taskdev.json

Each folder in a multi-root workspace can have its own task file.

Fields:

For compact config, tasks may also be an object keyed by category name. That form avoids repeating category, but task editing commands require the array form.

MCP For Agents

TaskDev includes an MCP server. Your agent sees the exact same task list you see in the sidebar - same processes, same logs.

Run TaskDev: Install MCP config from the command palette and pick which agents to wire up. Detected config files are pre-checked. TaskDev only writes MCP config when you run this command.

After each TaskDev update, re-run Install MCP config. The MCP config stores the installed extension path, which changes on every version bump. TaskDev will prompt you - nothing is rewritten until you confirm in the picker.

A typical agent loop:

change code → taskdev_restart api → taskdev_logs api → read error → fix

No retry loops. No hung commands. No "is the dev server still running?".

The agent gets nine tools:

In a multi-root workspace, every tool accepts an optional project argument. With one project it's inferred. With several, the agent calls taskdev_projects first to pick the right one.

Trust And Safety

Commands in your own taskdev.json are shell commands. Treat task files like code. Only run them in workspaces you trust.

Agent-added tasks (taskdev_add) are sandboxed:

• no shell chaining, redirects, variables, or subshells
• no path traversal or arguments outside the project
• no risky env overrides (PATH, NODE_OPTIONS, dynamic-loader vars, ...)
• only known dev shapes: npm / pnpm / yarn scripts, dotnet, cargo, go
• explicit confirmation before any add or remove

The agent can spin up dotnet test. It cannot invent curl ... | sh.

For the exact allow-list and env rules, see security.md; for the runtime layout, see config.md. TaskDev does not collect telemetry. It does not open a network listener. See PRIVACY.md for local data notes.

Docs

Read the docs on taskdev.dev/docs or browse the source in the repo:

• Usage Guide · source — practical setups, multi-root recipes, agent house rules, troubleshooting.
• Configuration Reference · source — taskdev.json schema, runtime files, editor settings, MCP tools.
• Security & Sandboxing · source — trust model, allow-list, denylist, env rules for agent-added tasks.
• Article — the why-and-how writeup with screenshots.

Build From Source

From the repo root:

node scripts/package-vsix.cjs
windsurf --install-extension versions/taskdev-<version>.vsix

The extension package lives in extension/. Local task files, logs, MCP config files, and VSIX outputs stay outside the package.