CCA Arbiter

The arbiter's seat for the CCA plugin — Coder / Critic / Arbiter for Claude Code — inside the editor. (The plugin's own README sits at the root of the CCA repository; it is not part of this package.)

The Python hooks decide what to ask. This extension renders the question and returns your answer. It never decides anything on its own, and with it closed the plugin behaves exactly as it does from the terminal.

What it does

Live dashboard (CCA: Open Dashboard) — the critic feed, the phase strip and the tuning stats, streamed from .cca/events.jsonl.
Block modal — when the critics reject an edit: Uphold, Queue to CF.md, or Overrule with a note. Dismiss it and the block stands.
Commit modal — when a phase is ready: Commit, Edit message…, Later. The commit runs as your click, from your workspace, with exactly the files the phase gate named.
Critic Feedback tree — CF.md as a list, with Overrule and Wontfix… applied as undoable workspace edits.
Status bar — CCA · phase 3/11 · 2 open · ⏳ waiting on you.

Install

This extension does nothing on its own. It is the editor surface for the CCA plugin for Claude Code, and needs that installed first:

/plugin marketplace add Mukeshsingh8/critic
/plugin install cca@cca

Then install this from your editor's extension panel, or build it:

npm --prefix extension install
npm --prefix extension run package      # produces cca-arbiter-0.1.0.vsix
code --install-extension extension/cca-arbiter-0.1.0.vsix

Note that the plugin spends your Claude subscription: two model reviews per edit. See the project README before installing.

Any VS Code 1.85+ host works, including Cursor, Windsurf and Antigravity — the extension uses no proprietary APIs. It cannot hook a different agent's edits, though: the enforcement is Claude Code's hooks, so this helps only when Claude Code is the one editing.

How it talks to the plugin

A file mailbox under .cca/. No ports, no daemon, no sockets.

File	Written by	Meaning
`arbiter.json`	extension, every 5s	a human is reachable
`pending/<id>.json`	hook	a question, with a deadline
`decisions/<id>.json`	extension	the answer

If the heartbeat is missing or older than arbiter.stale_after (15s), the hooks do not wait at all. Timeout, malformed answer and crash all fall back to the plugin's own default: Uphold for a block, Later for a commit.

Configuration

.cca/config.json in the project:

{ "arbiter": { "enabled": true, "block_wait": 180, "commit_wait": 300, "stale_after": 15 } }

"enabled": false turns the bridge off and leaves the critics and the phase gate untouched.

Development

npm --prefix extension test     # vitest on the pure modules, then tsc --noEmit
npm --prefix extension run build

F5 in extension/ opens an Extension Development Host on ../test-project.