Azure Pipelines Inbox

Monitor your Azure DevOps pipeline runs live from VS Code's sidebar, without switching to the browser — the Stage → Job → Task timeline and logs update in real time, and a notification tells you when a run finishes. When a build fails, jump straight to the first error and copy it, trimmed and with context, into your AI assistant (Cursor, Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT) to fix.

Features

• Runs inbox — a tree of recent runs per subscribed project, with status icons that update in place.
• Live timeline — expand a run to see its Stage → Job → Task tree; in-progress steps spin and flip to pass/fail as they finish.
• Live log tail — open the logs for any step in a rich panel that appends new lines while the step runs, with ##[error] / ##[warning] / ##[section] highlighting.
• Jump to first error — on a failed run, one click (the 🐛 button or View First Error) opens the first failed step's log scrolled straight to the error.
• Copy for AI — copy a step's log straight into your AI chat (Cursor, Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT). It adds a short context header (pipeline, step, result, branch, link) and, for long logs, trims to the errors plus surrounding context so the important part fits the model's window. A plain Copy log is there too.
• Pipelines view — a second tree listing every pipeline in your subscribed projects, for browsing and running them directly (see Run actions).
• Run-time insights — in-progress runs show elapsed vs. typical duration (running 7m / ~12m) so you know whether to wait or walk away; each pipeline shows its typical duration and pass rate (with last failure in the tooltip), computed from its recent history. Stats appear once a pipeline has at least 3 completed runs.
• Filters — only my runs, status (all / succeeded / failed), and branch.
• Run actions — Run a pipeline (▶ on each pipeline in the Pipelines view, with a branch prompt), cancel an in-progress run, or — from a run's right-click menu — re-run the whole pipeline or re-run just the failed jobs. If your token already has the write scope these just work; otherwise the first use walks you through a one-time token upgrade — until then your sign-in stays read-only.

It polls only while something is in progress, then goes idle. Finished runs surface as a desktop notification (configurable via notifyOnComplete) and a ▶ N running / ✖ N failed status-bar summary that jumps you back to the inbox.

The log panel tailing a step — error/warning highlighting, with Copy for AI and Copy log in the header.

Install

Search Azure Pipelines Inbox in the Extensions view. It's published to both the VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX, so it installs in VS Code as well as Cursor, VSCodium, and Windsurf.

Getting started

1. Run Azure Pipelines: Sign In and enter your organization URL (e.g. https://dev.azure.com/contoso) and a Personal Access Token with Build (Read) and Project and Team (Read) scopes.
2. Run Azure Pipelines: Manage Subscriptions and pick the projects whose pipelines you want to see.
3. Expand a run to watch its timeline; click a step (or use View Logs) to tail its log.

Settings

Run actions (run / cancel / re-run)

The actions are always available, but the extension stays read-only by default: an action is first tried with your current token, so if it already has Build (Read & Execute) it just works. Only if Azure refuses are you asked for a token with that scope (a one-time setup — the write token is a superset of read, so your existing read features keep working). Cancel out and nothing changes. You can also do the token upgrade up front via Azure Pipelines: Enable Run Actions.

The actions:

• Run Pipeline — the ▶ button on each pipeline in the Pipelines view; prompts for a branch (leave it empty to run the pipeline's default branch).
• Cancel Run — on an in-progress run.
• Re-run Pipeline — right-click a run; queues a fresh run of the whole pipeline.
• Re-run Failed Jobs — right-click a failed run; retries only the failed stages in place (the same run goes back to in-progress), like the Azure DevOps web UI's "Rerun failed jobs". Pipelines without stages (classic builds) fall back to a full re-run.

The re-run actions live in the right-click menu only (no hover buttons), so a stray click on a run row can never queue a build.

How "live" works

Azure DevOps has no public push API; its own web UI builds the live view by polling. This extension does the same via azure-devops-node-api: it polls the build timeline to update the step tree and re-reads the active step's log lines from an advancing offset to append output. Polling runs only while a run is in progress.

Development

npm install
npm run build      # esbuild bundle → dist/extension.js
npm run watch      # rebuild on change (for F5)
npm run compile    # tsc --noEmit type-check
npm run lint

Press F5 to launch the Extension Development Host.

The Marketplace icon (media/icon.png) is generated from scripts/gen-icon.js — run node scripts/gen-icon.js to regenerate it after tweaking the design.

More from this author

• Azure Boards Inbox — a focused sidebar inbox for your assigned work items and their comments, organized by project with live counts and one-click actions.
• Azure Pull Requests Inbox — your team's pull requests in the sidebar, with the ones that need your review pinned on top: native side-by-side diffs, conversation threads with reply, voting and merging from the editor, and one-click AI review.