One Shell

Share code snippets with other developers on the same network — without leaving VS Code, and without setting anything up.

One Shell auto-discovers other VS Code instances running the extension on your local network (LAN) and lets you broadcast or privately reply with code snippets, inserted directly at your teammate's cursor.

How it works

1. Select some code in the editor
2. Right-click → Shell Options
3. Choose an action:
   • Share a Snippet — broadcasts the snippet to everyone on the network (the Primary Shell)
   • Primary Shell — browse everything shared with the group and insert it at your cursor
   • Reply to a Snippet — pick which existing snippet (from Primary or Secondary Shell) you're replying to; the target person and the reply's header are both worked out automatically
   • Secondary Shell — browse your private threads with individual peers, shown as a reply tree

No servers, accounts, or configuration required — One Shell finds peers automatically using mDNS (Zeroconf) as soon as they're on the same network with the extension running.

Primary vs. Secondary Shell

Replying to a snippet

When you select code and choose Reply to a Snippet, you're shown a list of every snippet you know about — Primary Shell first, then Secondary Shell, in two clearly separated sections. Pick the one you're replying to:

• The target person is worked out automatically from who originally sent that snippet — no need to pick a device yourself
• The header is generated automatically as "{your name} replied to this snippet : {the header of the snippet you picked}"
• Replying to something that was itself a reply creates a branch of a branch — Secondary Shell displays this as a nested tree (indented with ↳), so you can follow a conversation's shape at a glance instead of a flat list

Snippet retention & clearing up

By default, snippets are automatically cleared after 24 hours. Change this with the oneShell.snippetRetentionHours setting in VS Code (Settings → search "One Shell"). Set it to 0 to keep snippets indefinitely instead.

You can also clear things manually at any time via Shell Options → Clear Primary Shell or Clear Secondary Shell (both ask for confirmation first).

Where snippets are stored

Snippets are saved locally as a plain JSON file, not encrypted, under VS Code's global storage folder for this extension (on Windows, typically under %APPDATA%\Code\User\globalStorage\). You can open, back up, or delete this file directly if you'd rather manage it by hand. Treat shared snippets like any other locally-cached text: anyone with access to your machine's filesystem can read it.

Requirements

• All participants must be on the same LAN (or a network that allows mDNS/local multicast traffic)
• The extension must be installed and active on each participant's VS Code

Known limitations

• LAN discovery only — no internet-based or Bluetooth/PAN discovery yet
• Some corporate or public Wi-Fi networks block the multicast traffic mDNS relies on; if peers aren't discovered within a few seconds, this is the most likely cause
• No end-to-end encryption yet — treat shared snippets as visible to anyone able to join the same local network

Feedback

This extension is under active development. Issues and suggestions are welcome via the repository issue tracker.