Routabout in your editor — smart routing across every model, cross-model
verification by default, and your code as context. The IDE-bound surface of the
Pro Coder tier (D-RA-87 #11): "Pro Coder talks to your stack."
What it does
Chat panel in the activity bar that streams answers from Routabout.
Editor context — your selection (or the active file) is attached to each
question with its path, language, and line range, so answers are grounded in
your actual code.
Pro Coder routing — requests go through the three-rung waterfall
(Devstral → GPT-5 → Sonnet) with the Magistral reviewer, and the panel shows
which model answered + the per-query cost (path transparency).
Ask about selection — select code, Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+R (or right-click →
Routabout: Ask about selection), type a question.
Setup
Generate an API key in the Routabout app (API Keys → create). It looks
like sk-rb-….
In VS Code, run Routabout: Set API key (Command Palette) and paste it.
The key is stored in VS Code's secret store, not settings.json.
Open the Routabout view in the activity bar and ask away.
Settings
Setting
Default
Description
routabout.apiUrl
https://routabout-production.up.railway.app
API base URL.
routabout.tier
procoder
standard or procoder.
routabout.includeEditorContext
true
Attach the active selection/file as context.
routabout.maxContextLines
400
Cap on attached context lines (head+tail kept, middle elided).
The API key can also be set via routabout.apiKey, but the secret store
(Routabout: Set API key) is preferred — it keeps the key out of synced
settings.
Develop
npm install
npm run compile # tsc → out/
npm test # compile + node --test out/test/ (pure-logic unit tests)
npm run typecheck # tsc --noEmit
Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host with the extension
loaded.
Architecture
Pure, vscode-free modules (unit-tested): types.ts, sse.ts (stream parsing),
api.ts (client + request building), editorContextFormat.ts (context
formatting). The vscode-touching modules (config.ts, editorContext.ts,
chatPanel.ts, extension.ts) are thin shells over them. The conversation is
held client-side (the full message list is re-sent each turn) — no server-side
conversation_id for the MVP.
Roadmap
Frontier-reviewer / session toggles in the composer (backend ships #3).
Inline code-action edits (apply a suggested diff).
