carryOn for VS Code

Persistent terminal sessions for VS Code. Start a terminal, close the editor, reopen it - your session is right where you left it, processes running, scrollback intact.

carryOn is a terminal session manager. A background daemon keeps your sessions alive through editor crashes, SSH drops, system restarts, and everything else. This extension brings your carryOn sessions into VS Code as native terminal tabs with a dedicated sidebar for browsing, managing, and monitoring them.

Features

Sessions that survive everything

Your terminal sessions persist no matter what happens. Close VS Code, reboot your machine, lose your network connection - when you come back, your sessions are still running. Full scrollback is preserved so you can see everything that happened while you were away.

Work with AI agents

Running Claude, Copilot, or another AI agent on a long task? Check on it from your phone via the built-in web UI, respond to prompts, approve actions, and course-correct without being at your desk. carryOn keeps agent sessions alive and accessible from VS Code, the CLI, or any browser on your network.

A dedicated activity bar panel shows all your sessions organized by workspace, project, and working directory. See which clients are connected, hover for session details, and open any session with a click. Remote sessions from other devices on your team appear here too.

Project configuration

Define your project's terminals in a .carryon.json file and carryOn will offer to start them when you open the workspace. Your dev server, test watcher, and build process - all launched automatically, all persistent. Wrap terminals in an array to open them as a split group, and set color for colored tab icons.

{
  "version": 1,
  "terminals": [
    { "name": "server", "command": "npm run dev", "color": "green" },
    [
      { "name": "tests", "command": "npm test -- --watch", "color": "yellow" },
      { "name": "logs", "command": "tail -f app.log", "color": "cyan" }
    ]
  ]
}

Access from your local network

carryOn includes a built-in web UI that lets you access your sessions from any browser on your network - your phone, tablet, or another machine. No account required, no cloud, no relay. When exposed to the network, carryOn automatically adds password protection and self-signed TLS.

carryon config set local.enabled true
carryon config set local.expose true

Remote access with E2E encryption

Need to reach your sessions from outside your local network? carryOn's relay connects your devices over the internet with end-to-end encryption (X25519 + ChaCha20-Poly1305). The relay cannot read your data. Browse remote devices and their sessions directly from the VS Code sidebar. No VPN, no tunnels, no port forwarding.

Built-in settings panel

Configure carryOn directly from VS Code. The settings panel in the sidebar shows daemon status, lets you toggle the web UI, switch backends, and adjust configuration - all with live updates.

Requirements

The carryOn CLI must be installed and available on your PATH.

# macOS
brew install carryon-dev/tap/carryon

# Linux / macOS (manual)
curl -fsSL https://carryon.dev/get | sh

The daemon starts automatically on first use - no manual setup needed.

Getting started

Install the carryOn CLI (see above)
Install this extension from the VS Code Marketplace
Open the carryOn sidebar (activity bar icon) - your sessions appear automatically

Create a new session using the carryOn terminal profile (Terminal > New Terminal dropdown) or from the command line:

carryon --name dev-server

The session appears as a VS Code terminal tab. Detach with Ctrl+C Ctrl+C (double tap). Close VS Code entirely. Reopen it. Your session is still there.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`carryon.cliPath`	auto-detected	Path to the carryOn CLI binary
`carryon.autoOpenTerminals`	`false`	Auto-open terminals declared in `.carryon.json` when opening a workspace

Commands

All commands are available from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P):

Command	Description
carryOn: Open in Terminal	Open a session as a VS Code terminal tab
carryOn: Kill Session	Terminate a session and its processes
carryOn: Rename Session	Rename a session
carryOn: Associate with Workspace	Link a session to the current workspace
carryOn: Detach from Workspace	Remove a session's workspace association
carryOn: Refresh Sessions	Refresh the session list
carryOn: Open Logs	View daemon logs

How it works

carryOn runs a background daemon that manages terminal sessions independently of any editor or client. The VS Code extension connects to the daemon over a Unix socket (IPC) and spawns carryon attach processes inside VS Code's terminal emulator. This means carryOn sessions look and feel like regular VS Code terminals, but they outlive the editor.

The extension supports two backends:

native - built-in PTY management with no external dependencies (default)
tmux - delegates to tmux for users who prefer it

License

Functional Source License 1.1 (FSL-1.1-ALv2). You can read, modify, and use the code freely - you just can't use it to build a competing product. After 2 years, each version converts to Apache 2.0.

carryOn