AURORA Agent for VS Code

Context engineering, with receipts — compile decision context, drive grant-authorised autonomous workflows, and manage the AURORA Agent platform from VS Code.

The extension is a front-end for the bioprism command line, the bioprism-mcp MCP server, and the bioprism-api HTTP gateway. It ships no platform logic of its own: every result comes from the CLI's own JSON, summaries show limitations verbatim and digests in full, and every summary links to its raw JSON — the file on disk when the CLI wrote one, otherwise a read-only virtual document holding the CLI's exact output (dry-run outcomes, verify/explain/validate results).

Research and developer infrastructure: it does not diagnose an individual, recommend treatment, triage care, enroll participants, or claim medical-device functionality.

What it does

• Compile context — pick a world and a query, run context compile with --certificate-out and --section-out into .aurora/, and read the certificate as a faithful summary: verdict, selection counts, the omission-accounting table, full digests, and the certificate's limitations array verbatim. Verify and explain commands wrap context verify --certificate and context explain.
• Workflows view — lists the capability groups from workflow catalogue --json with their tools (missing tools stay visible). Context-menu actions scaffold a group (the generated steps open as an untitled document you review and save) and instantiate it. Instantiate runs the CLI's authoritative no-dispatch preflight; nothing is executed by either action.
• Autopilot — grant-template opens an editable grant document (authority for autonomous dispatch comes only from that document; there is no default grant). Run shows a confirmation modal listing the grant's allowed_tools, allow_side_effects, and max_attempts before real dispatch; Dry-Run needs no confirmation because --dry-run dispatches nothing and writes nothing. Reports land in the reports directory and render with final_status, totals, attempts, digests, and limitations verbatim; autopilot verify --report checks a report's digest.
• Autopilot Reports view — watches the reports directory (default <workspace>/.aurora/reports) and badges each report by its final_status (succeeded / exhausted / refused).
• Pipelines view — if the gh CLI is installed and authenticated, lists the last 10 GitHub Actions runs for the repository named by the workspace's remote.origin.url; a click opens the run in the browser. Without gh the view shows a single informational row.
• Gateway — starts bioprism-api as a VS Code task bound to 127.0.0.1:8787 (no --token is supplied; the gateway's own default is loopback), and stops it.
• Doctor — status-bar item plus a command that prints binary resolution, bioprism --version, root, MCP API availability, and gh presence to the "AURORA Agent" output channel. That channel also logs every command line the extension spawns.

Exit code 1 from the CLI is treated as what it is — a verdict, not an error. Failures surface the CLI's own retryability word (terminal, retryable_after_change, retryable_as_is).

Install

There is no Marketplace listing yet; sideload the .vsix from the release:

1. Download aurora-agent-0.1.3.vsix from the v0.1.3 release (https://github.com/AURORA-NEURO/aurora-agent/releases/tag/v0.1.3).
2. code --install-extension aurora-agent-0.1.3.vsix (or Extensions view → ... → Install from VSIX...).

Build from source (alternative)

From editors/vscode, run npm install && npm run package — it produces the same aurora-agent-0.1.3.vsix, installed with the same code --install-extension step.

Binary resolution

The extension finds the platform binaries in this order:

1. auroraAgent.binaryDir setting (a directory containing bioprism(.exe) and friends)
2. AURORA_AGENT_ROOT environment variable (a checkout with target/release/)
3. any workspace folder containing target/release/bioprism(.exe)
4. ~/aurora-agent, then ~/bioprism
5. the managed download cache

If nothing is found, commands offer to download the v0.1.3 release archive for your platform from GitHub Releases. The download is verified against a SHA-256 pinned in the extension source; on mismatch the file is deleted and nothing is extracted. Archives exist for Windows x64, macOS x64/arm64, and Linux x64 (zip extraction uses the system tar).

MCP / AI integration

On VS Code 1.101 or later the extension registers an MCP server definition provider (contribution point mcpServerDefinitionProviders, API vscode.lm.registerMcpServerDefinitionProvider), publishing an "AURORA Agent" stdio server that runs bioprism-mcp --root <root>. MCP-aware AI in VS Code — including Copilot agent mode — can then call the platform's 259 tools (path-confined to the root). The API is stable in 1.101, which is why engines.vscode is ^1.101.0; a runtime capability check still guards registration so the extension degrades gracefully in builds that lack the API.

For other MCP clients, AURORA Agent: Copy MCP Configuration Snippet puts a ready mcpServers block (absolute binary path plus --root) on the clipboard for pasting into .mcp.json or equivalent.

Settings

Limitations

• No Marketplace listing yet — install is by sideloaded .vsix only.
• The managed download contains binaries only: its default root has no fixtures, so fixture-dependent features (the shipped reference worlds, for instance) need auroraAgent.root pointed at a checkout.
• Autopilot has no scheduling or recurrence, no cross-process resume, and no wall-clock deadlines; a run lives and dies with the process that started it.
• MCP registration depends on the vscode.lm.registerMcpServerDefinitionProvider API. engines.vscode (^1.101.0) already blocks installation on older VS Code, so the runtime guard exists for builds that report 1.101+ but do not implement the API (some VS Code-derived editors): there the extension's other features work and no MCP server is registered. Doctor reports which case applies.
• Tests are node:test unit tests of the extension's pure logic (pinned-hash table, resolution ordering, CLI envelope parsing, gh run mapping, grant summarising, summary rendering). There are no VS Code UI tests.
• Research and developer infrastructure: it does not diagnose an individual, recommend treatment, triage care, enroll participants, or claim medical-device functionality.