Claude Terminal Manager

A VS Code extension that tracks Claude Code sessions in VS Code terminals with a sidebar panel. See at a glance which sessions are running, waiting for input, or need your attention — across all your VS Code windows.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85+
• Claude Code CLI must be installed and available in your terminal PATH (verify with which claude)
• Python 3 must be available as python3 (used by the hook reporter script for JSON parsing and socket communication)
• Git — used to detect the current branch for sidebar labels. Branch detection fails gracefully if git is not installed, but labels will be missing.
• ps (Unix) — used to walk the process tree and match Claude sessions to their VS Code terminals. Pre-installed on macOS and Linux.
• code CLI (or code-insiders) — required for the multi-window feature to activate remote VS Code windows. Install via Command Palette → "Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH". Only needed if showTerminalsFromAllWindows is enabled.

Installation

Install via Extensions panel → ... → Install from VSIX....

Setup

The extension registers hooks directly in ~/.claude/settings.json on activation. No special terminal setup is required.

• Claude sessions will appear in the Terminals panel in the Explorer view.

Features

Sidebar Panel

The extension adds a Terminals panel to two locations:

• Explorer sidebar — nested under your file explorer
• Dedicated activity bar icon — a standalone Claude Terminal Manager sidebar

Both panels show the same live tree of terminals and sessions.

Session Tracking

Each Claude Code session is tracked through its full lifecycle via hook events:

Session Status Indicators

Sessions in the sidebar display visual indicators:

• ● (filled dot) — Needs attention: Claude has stopped and is waiting for input, or is asking a question. This is the initial indicator after a Stop or AskUserQuestion event.
• ○ (open dot) — Seen / waiting for input: The user has clicked the session to acknowledge it, but has not yet submitted a new prompt. This clears the "needs attention" flag while the session remains idle.
• No prefix — Running: Claude is actively processing

Session Naming & Slugs

Sessions are labeled using the following priority:

1. Custom name — set via the rename command (pencil icon)
2. Slug — automatically resolved from Claude Code's conversation JSONL file. The extension reads customTitle (user-set title) first, falling back to slug (auto-generated identifier like "structured-fluttering-church"). Slugs are re-checked every 5 seconds to pick up renames.
3. "Claude" — default fallback

Terminal Correlation

The extension automatically matches Claude sessions to their VS Code terminal by walking the process tree (child → parent) up to 20 hops. This lets you click a session in the sidebar to jump directly to the terminal running it.

Multi-Window Support

When enabled, the sidebar shows terminals from all open VS Code windows, grouped by workspace:

• Local section — terminals in the current window (labeled with workspace name and git branch)
• Remote sections — terminals from other VS Code windows, each showing their workspace name and branch

Each window publishes its terminal state to a shared registry file (heartbeat every 30s, stale entries pruned after 90s). Clicking a remote terminal sends a focus request via IPC and activates the target window using the code CLI (code -r <folder>, or code-insiders -r for Insiders builds).

Focus & Navigation

Session Reaper

A background process checks every 5 seconds whether tracked Claude processes are still alive. Dead processes are automatically cleaned up with a synthetic session_end event and immediately removed from the sidebar.

Git Branch Detection

The current git branch is detected every 5 seconds and displayed next to the workspace name in the sidebar section headers (e.g. "my-project - feature/auth").

Commands

How It Works

1. The extension registers Claude Code hooks in ~/.claude/settings.json on activation.
2. The hooks forward session lifecycle events (start, prompts, tool use, stop) to the extension via a Unix socket.
3. The extension parses events, updates a state machine, and renders the live session tree in the sidebar.

Settings

claudeTerminalManager.sidebar.showNonClaudeTerminals

Default: false

Controls whether plain (non-Claude) terminals appear in the sidebar. When false, only terminals with an active Claude session are shown. When true, all open terminals are listed — terminals without a Claude session show with a generic terminal icon, while Claude sessions show with the Claude icon.

claudeTerminalManager.status.verboseToolNames

Default: true

Controls whether the currently running tool name is displayed next to a session in the sidebar. When enabled, sessions show a status label like "Running: Bash" or "Running: Read" while Claude is executing a tool. When disabled, no tool name is shown — sessions just show the prompt subtitle.

claudeTerminalManager.sidebar.showTerminalsFromAllWindows

Default: true

Controls whether terminals from other VS Code windows appear in the sidebar. When enabled, the sidebar is split into sections: a local section for the current window and a remote section for each other open VS Code window. Each section header shows the workspace name and git branch. When disabled, only terminals from the current window are shown.

Troubleshooting

If sessions are not appearing in the sidebar:

1. Check that hooks are registered in ~/.claude/settings.json — look for entries containing --vscode-ctm.
2. Run echo $VSCODE_CLAUDE_SOCKET in a VS Code terminal — it should print a socket path like /tmp/vscode-claude-<uuid>.sock. If it is empty, try relaunching the terminal or reloading VS Code.

Accessibility

All session tree items include accessibilityInformation labels so screen readers can announce the session name and current status. Session status indicators (filled dot, open dot) are also conveyed through text labels, not just visual symbols.

Development

Building from Source

Clone the repo, then build and install the extension:

pnpm build-install

This compiles the extension, packages it as a .vsix file, and installs it into your running VS Code instance.