Shelltify

Never wonder if your terminal command has finished again.

Shelltify notifies you the moment a terminal command completes, fails, or is cancelled. Whether you're building a Docker image, installing packages, running tests, compiling code, or executing long-running scripts, Shelltify lets you know the instant it's done.

Unlike extensions that scan terminal output, Shelltify uses VS Code's built-in Shell Integration API to detect command lifecycle events. It's lightweight, event-driven, and works without polling or parsing terminal output.

✨ Features

• 🔔 Instant notifications for successful, failed, cancelled, and unknown command completions.
• 🖥️ Native OS notifications when VS Code is minimized or unfocused.
• 🔊 Optional sound alerts using the system sound or your own audio file.
• ⏱️ Minimum duration filter to ignore short-lived commands.
• 🚫 Ignore list with exact matches or regular expressions.
• 📜 Command history with execution status, duration, terminal, and exit code.
• 📊 Status bar indicator showing the number of currently running commands.
• ⚡ Independent tracking across multiple terminals.
• 🎛️ Interactive notifications with actions like Open Terminal and Copy Command.

📸 Screenshots

Success Notification

Failure Notification

Cancelled Notification

History

🚀 Installation

Install Shelltify directly from the VS Code Marketplace, or install a packaged .vsix manually:

code --install-extension shelltify-0.1.0.vsix

📖 Usage

Run commands in the integrated terminal as you normally would.

Shelltify automatically watches command execution in the background and notifies you when the command finishes.

Common examples include:

• docker build
• npm install
• cargo build
• pytest
• mvn package
• python train.py
• terraform apply

No additional setup is required for supported shells.

⚙️ Requirements

Shelltify relies on VS Code Shell Integration.

Shell Integration is enabled by default in modern versions of VS Code for most supported shells, including:

• PowerShell
• Bash
• Zsh
• Fish
• WSL

If notifications aren't appearing, open the Shelltify output channel to verify that Shell Integration has been detected.

Settings

Example ignore list:

"shelltify.ignoreCommands": [
  "npm run dev",
  "tail -f",
  "docker compose up",
  "/^python .*\\.py$/"
]

Commands

Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and search for:

• Shelltify: Toggle Notifications
• Shelltify: View History
• Shelltify: Clear History
• Shelltify: Test Success Notification
• Shelltify: Test Failure Notification
• Shelltify: Open Settings

FAQ

Nothing's notifying me — what's wrong? Almost always Shell Integration. Open a fresh integrated terminal and check the "Shelltify" output channel (View → Output, then pick it from the dropdown) — it logs whether integration was detected.

Why didn't npm run dev notify me? It's still running — that's by design. Long-running/dev-server-style commands only notify once they actually exit.

Can I use a regex in the ignore list? Yes — wrap it in slashes: "/^docker compose (up|logs)/". Optional flags go after the trailing slash, e.g. /pattern/i.

Does this work over SSH / in a devcontainer / in WSL? Yes, as long as Shell Integration is active in that remote/container shell — it's a VS Code terminal feature, not tied to where the shell process actually runs.

Known Limitations

• cmd.exe has weak Shell Integration support in VS Code. Shelltify will warn you (once, plus every time in the output channel) if a cmd.exe terminal never establishes it. PowerShell, bash, zsh, and WSL are all reliable; cmd.exe is not. Switch the terminal's shell if you need notifications there.
• Shell Integration occasionally can't determine an exit code for commands that draw their own terminal UI (Docker BuildKit's progress output is a common case). These are shown as a distinct "finished (exit code unknown)" notification rather than being dropped — check the output channel for a warning explaining why.
• "Native OS notification" support depends on the underlying OS notification helper being available in your environment; it degrades silently (no popup, no crash) if it isn't — see Troubleshooting below.
• There's no single VS Code API for "shell type" — the terminal name is always accurate, but the reported shell type is best-effort.

Troubleshooting

Open View → Output, then pick Shelltify from the channel dropdown — every notify/skip decision is logged there with a reason.

Native (OS-level) notifications aren't appearing on Windows. The in-editor popup still works even if this fails — native notifications are a separate channel via node-notifier's Windows toast helper (SnoreToast). Check the output channel: a failed attempt logs the underlying error. Common causes:

• Windows Focus Assist is on and suppressing toasts.
• Notifications are disabled for the helper app under Settings → System → Notifications.
• The helper binary got flagged/blocked by antivirus software.

Native notifications also only fire while the VS Code window is unfocused (by design — that's the point of them); the output channel logs when one is skipped for being focused, so you can tell the difference between "skipped because focused" and "attempted but failed."

A command finished but I never got notified. Check the output channel for a line starting with "Notification skipped for..." — it names the exact reason (ignore list, notifications toggled off, etc.). If instead you see "Could not determine an exit code," that's the Shell Integration limitation above — you should still get a "❔ finished (exit code unknown)" notification for it; if you don't see even that, check whether shelltify.toggleNotifications was switched off.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Before submitting a PR:

npm install
npm run lint
npm run test:unit
npm run test:integration

Packaging & Publishing

Package a .vsix you can install locally or hand to someone else:

npm install
npm run compile
npx vsce package

This produces shelltify-<version>.vsix in the project root — install it with code --install-extension shelltify-<version>.vsix.

To publish to the VS Code Marketplace:

1. Create a publisher and replace karthikeya-theDev in package.json (the publisher field, and the repository/bugs/homepage URLs) with your real publisher id.
2. Get a Personal Access Token from Azure DevOps with Marketplace: Manage scope.
3. Log in and publish:

npx vsce login <publisher-id>
npx vsce publish

vsce publish runs vscode:prepublish (which compiles) automatically, so a plain npx vsce publish patch|minor|major will also bump the version in package.json for you.

Before your first real publish, swap out the assets in resources/ with your final 128×128 branding if you want a more polished Marketplace appearance.

License

MIT