Claude Theater — VS Code extension

Watch your Claude Code subagents as a live, animated office, inside VS Code — in an editor tab beside your file (the same place Markdown/code open), where clicks, focus, language toggle, search, and keyboard nav all work (unlike the built-in Simple Browser, which doesn't forward those).

By default the office opens beside your editor on startup, so it sits next to what you're working on. Close it like any tab (the X), or turn off the auto-open from the "📡 Theater" status-bar menu or claudeTheater.openOnStartup.

Install

The server is bundled into the extension — no separate install needed.

• Prebuilt: download claude-theater-<version>.vsix from the latest release, then run Extensions: Install from VSIX… (or code --install-extension <file>.vsix).
• From source: cd vscode-extension && npx @vscode/vsce package, then install the .vsix.

Use

• The bundled server auto-starts in the background when VS Code launches, and the office opens beside your editor on startup (a split editor tab). Prefer it stay closed? Close the tab with its X, pick "Don't open automatically" from the "📡 Theater" status-bar menu, or turn off claudeTheater.openOnStartup.
• Open the office any time from the "📡 Theater" status-bar button or the Command Palette → "Claude Theater: Open Theater".
• If a server is already running on 127.0.0.1:7333, it connects to that one instead of starting another.

Settings

• claudeTheater.port (default 7333) — server port.
• claudeTheater.autoStart (default true) — auto-start the server on launch.
• claudeTheater.openOnStartup (default true) — open the panel beside your editor on startup.
• claudeTheater.pythonPath — interpreter for the server (empty = try python, py, python3).
• claudeTheater.serverScript — path to claude_theater.py (empty = use the bundled copy).

How it works / privacy

The panel embeds the server's own HTML directly in the webview and fetches data from 127.0.0.1. The server only emits CORS headers to a vscode-webview:// origin, so the page stays local-only — a web page in a normal browser can't read your agents. No telemetry, no outbound calls.

Develop

Open this folder in VS Code and press F5 (Extension Development Host). The repo root (one level up) must contain claude_theater.py so the auto-start can resolve python -m claude_theater.