ARIA for VS Code
The coding agent that remembers you — in your IDE.
ARIA is an AI coding agent with persistent Memoria, personas (arions) that you can fork and collaborate with, a P2P WireGuard mesh, and an MIT-licensed Bun-native runtime. This extension brings it into VS Code.
Features
🪄 Native @aria chat participant
Open the VS Code Chat panel, type @aria, and ARIA answers with full awareness of your current file, your selection, and everything it has remembered about your codebase across sessions. Works exactly like the chat participants you already use — Copilot, Continue, Cody — but backed by the local ARIA daemon instead of a cloud vendor.
Slash-commands:
@aria /explain — Explain the selected code with architectural awareness@aria /refactor — Rewrite while preserving behaviour@aria /test — Write tests in your project's existing style@aria /remember — Pin a fact into persistent Memoria@aria /persona — Switch which arion answers for this workspace
💾 Persistent memory (Memoria)
The killer differentiator. ARIA remembers your codebase across sessions. Open VS Code tomorrow and ARIA still knows the architectural decisions you made today. Browse and search via the Memoria panel in the activity bar.
👥 Personas (arions)
Switch between arions mid-task via the status bar or ARIA: Switch Persona command. Use @codex for focused coding, @reviewer for critical review, or hatch your own.
🌐 Mesh peers
See which peers are online in the Mesh Peers panel. Collaborate with teammates' arions across a WireGuard-encrypted P2P mesh — zero cloud required.
⌨️ Commands + shortcuts
Cmd+Shift+A / Ctrl+Shift+A — Open ARIA chat- Right-click a selection → Ask ARIA → Explain / Refactor
- Command palette →
ARIA: … for all commands
🎛 Status bar
Bottom-right status bar shows:
- Daemon connection state (✓ connected / ⊘ offline)
- Active persona name
- Live mesh peer count
Install
Install the ARIA runtime:
brew install aria-cli/tap/aria
# OR
npm install -g @aria-cli/cli
# OR
curl -fsSL https://ariacli.com/install.sh | sh
Install the extension from the VS Code Marketplace:
code --install-extension aria-cli.aria
Or via the Extensions panel in VS Code → search ARIA → Install.
(If you prefer sideloading, the .vsix ships with every GitHub release: curl -fsSL https://github.com/aria-cli/aria-releases/releases/latest/download/aria-1.0.75.vsix -o /tmp/aria.vsix && code --install-extension /tmp/aria.vsix.)
Run aria once in a terminal. The daemon starts automatically and writes its endpoint to ~/.aria/run/daemon.json — the extension picks it up instantly.
No API keys, no cloud accounts, no config files. Everything runs locally by default.
Settings
All settings have sensible defaults. Override in Settings → ARIA if your deployment is non-standard:
aria.daemon.endpoint — Override auto-discovery (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:7777)aria.daemon.apiKey — Override the auto-loaded API keyaria.daemon.autoStart — Auto-start the daemon on VS Code launch (default true)aria.persona — Default arion for this workspacearia.workspace.autoContext — Include current file + selection in every request (default true)aria.sandbox.mode — read-only / workspace-write / full-access
Requirements
- VS Code
1.97.0 or newer (Chat Participant streaming API)
- ARIA CLI
1.0.75 or newer running locally
Privacy
Everything runs on your machine. The extension only talks to 127.0.0.1 — no data leaves your laptop unless you explicitly wire ARIA to an external LLM provider. Memoria, skills, personas, and mesh state are all stored in ~/.aria/.
Links
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
