Bernstein — Multi-Agent Orchestration

Orchestrate parallel AI coding agents from your editor. Monitor tasks, agents, and costs in real-time.

Screenshots

Overview

Bernstein spawns teams of specialized coding agents to tackle complex development goals in parallel. Built for professional software engineering — not a toy for prompting experiments.

• Parallel execution — multiple agents work simultaneously
• Task-driven — break goals into concrete tasks, track completion
• Model routing — assign agents by role and capability
• Cost tracking — real-time spend visibility per agent and task
• Integrated monitoring — dashboard, tree views, status bar all in VS Code

Quick Start

1. Start Bernstein from the command palette: Bernstein: Start

   • Launches the orchestrator on http://127.0.0.1:8052
   • Extension auto-connects when detected

2. View the dashboard

   • Click the Bernstein icon in the activity bar
   • See agents, tasks, and cost in real-time
   • Or open the full dashboard: Bernstein: Show Dashboard

3. Control agents

   • Right-click any agent to kill it or inspect logs
   • Click a task to view the diff or output
   • Close VS Code — agents keep running if you don't kill them

Requirements

• VS Code 1.100+ (or Cursor, VSCodium, or any VS Code fork)
• Bernstein server running locally (bernstein run from the Bernstein repository)

Configuration

Open VS Code settings and search for "Bernstein":

{
  "bernstein.apiUrl": "http://127.0.0.1:8052",
  "bernstein.apiToken": "",
  "bernstein.refreshInterval": 5
}

• apiUrl — where Bernstein orchestrator is running (default: localhost:8052)
• apiToken — optional bearer token if your orchestrator requires auth
• refreshInterval — how often to poll for updates (seconds)

Features

Activity Bar Icon

Navigate to the Bernstein panel to see:

• Agents — current team composition, status, cost
• Tasks — open, claimed, completed, and failed
• Dashboard — overview stats and alerts

Status Bar

At the bottom of VS Code:

🎼 3 agents · 7/12 tasks · $0.42

Click to open the dashboard.

Commands

• Bernstein: Refresh — force update the tree views
• Bernstein: Show Dashboard — open the dashboard in a new panel
• Bernstein: Kill Agent — terminate an agent (right-click menu)
• Bernstein: Show Agent Output — view agent's execution logs (right-click menu)

How Bernstein Works

1. Define a goal in your Bernstein config or via CLI
2. Orchestrator decomposes the goal into concrete tasks
3. Agents spawn for their assigned tasks (parallel execution)
4. Real-time tracking in VS Code shows progress, output, cost
5. Verification — Bernstein auto-verifies results before marking done
6. Self-evolution — Bernstein ships the code and improves itself

For Cursor Users

Bernstein works seamlessly in Cursor. Install from the Open VSX registry:

• Search for "bernstein" in Cursor's extensions panel
• Or install manually: code --install-extension alex-chernysh.bernstein

Privacy & Data

• Extension only connects to your local Bernstein server (default: localhost:8052)
• No telemetry, no tracking, no external calls
• All agent execution happens on your machine

Support

• Issue tracker — GitHub issues
• Documentation — chernistry.github.io/bernstein
• Source code — github.com/chernistry/bernstein

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE for details.