Arduino Sketch Studio for VS Code

Build and run the Arduino sketches you design with blocks — in plain VS Code.

Design a sketch with drag-and-drop blocks in Blocks Editor, then compile, upload and monitor it here, without leaving the editor. This extension is the run half of that workflow: Blocks Editor writes the sketch, Arduino Sketch Studio puts it on the board and shows you what it's doing. Hand-written sketches work exactly the same way — blocks are optional.

Not a replacement for the Arduino IDE. The Arduino IDE is the full, all-in-one desktop app for developing sketches. This extension doesn't compete with it: it's a thin wrapper over the very same arduino-cli the Arduino IDE uses under the hood, for people who'd rather drive that tool from the VS Code they already live in — with their own editor, extensions, themes and keybindings.

It's "just another Arduino CLI" by design. Arduino ships official command-line tools — arduino-cli for sketches, arduino-app-cli for UNO Q apps — and this extension gives the sketch one a native VS Code face, the same way its sibling Arduino App CLI does for UNO Q apps. The CLI does the real work; VS Code does what it's already great at.

Why you'll like it

• 🧩 The other half of Blocks Editor — design a sketch with blocks, then compile and upload it here; no GUI round-trip, no leaving VS Code.
• 🪶 Thin — talks to the official arduino-cli daemon over local gRPC, so your builds behave exactly like the Arduino IDE's; no heavyweight runtime, no second IDE.
• 🧰 Everything in the editor — Compile, Upload, Serial Monitor, and Debug buttons sit right in the editor toolbar for any .ino file.
• 🔌 Knows your board — pick a board once; it's remembered, and it can auto-install the core you need.
• 📦 Manage cores & libraries visually — install, update, downgrade, and remove platforms and libraries from a sidebar — no memorizing commands.
• 📈 Serial monitor and plotter — read text from your board, or graph live numbers as they stream in.
• 🐞 Real debugging — set breakpoints and step through code on supported boards.

Getting started

Step 1 — Install arduino-cli (required)

This extension does not bundle the Arduino toolchain — that's what keeps it thin. You install the official arduino-cli once, and the extension drives it.

• macOS (Homebrew): brew install arduino-cli
• Windows (winget): winget install ArduinoSA.CLI
• Linux / manual: follow the official installation guide.

Already have the Arduino IDE 2.x? It ships arduino-cli under the hood, but the extension needs it on your PATH. The simplest path is to install arduino-cli separately as above, or point the arduinoCli.path setting at the executable.

To check it worked, open a terminal and run arduino-cli version.

Step 2 — Install this extension

Search for "Arduino Sketch Studio" in the VS Code Extensions view, or install from Open VSX on VSCodium / Cursor / Windsurf.

Step 3 — Build your first sketch

1. Open a folder containing a sketch — an .ino file inside a folder of the same name (e.g. Blink/Blink.ino). Don't have one? Run Arduino Sketch Studio: New Sketch… from the Command Palette (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P).
2. Open the .ino file. You'll see Compile, Upload, Serial Monitor, and Debug buttons in the top-right editor toolbar.
3. Click Select Board (Command Palette → Arduino Sketch Studio: Select Board) and pick your board. If its core isn't installed yet, the extension offers to install it for you.
4. Plug in your board and click Upload (the ⬆ button). Watch progress in the output panel.
5. Click the Serial Monitor (🔌) button to see what your board prints back.

That's it — no project wizard, no IDE switch. Just VS Code.

The Arduino sidebar

Click the circuit board icon in the Activity Bar to open Arduino Platforms & Libraries, with up to three tree views:

• Installed Platforms — every core you have, with inline buttons to upgrade, change version, or uninstall. Toolbar buttons install a new platform, refresh, or upgrade them all.
• Installed Libraries — every library you have, with the same inline controls. Toolbar buttons add a library, refresh, or upgrade all. You can also install from a ZIP file or a Git URL.
• Profile Libraries — appears when your sketch uses a sketch.yaml build profile; lists the libraries pinned to the active profile.

What you can do

Everything below is available from the Command Palette (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P), the editor toolbar, or the sidebar.

Build & run

Serial

Platforms / cores

Libraries

Build profiles (sketch.yaml)

Debug & IntelliSense

Sketch & maintenance

Plotting serial data

The Serial Plotter graphs live numbers streaming from your board. It speaks a subset of the Teleplot serial protocol, so the same Serial.print lines that work with the Teleplot tool work here too.

The rule: a line is plotted only if it starts with a > marker. Every other line is treated as ordinary log text and ignored by the plotter (so you can keep printing human-readable messages alongside your data). A trailing newline ends each message — use Serial.println(...), not Serial.print(...).

Formats

The general shape of a telemetry line is >name[:timestamp]:value[§unit][|flags]:

• name is the series label — points sharing a name are drawn together.
• value, x, y must parse as numbers (integer, decimal, negative, or scientific, e.g. 42, 23.5, -33.8, 1.2e3). A non-numeric value is dropped — unless the |t flag marks it as text.
• timestamp is milliseconds (e.g. from millis()); when omitted, the point is stamped with the time it arrives in VS Code.
• §unit (a § after the value) labels the series with a unit, e.g. °C.
• ; separates several points for the same series in one line — handy for batching or replaying buffered samples.
• The |xy flag marks a scatter point; the |t flag marks a text value.

This is a subset of Teleplot: 3D shapes (3D|…) and remote function calls are not supported.

Arduino examples

Plot a single time series:

void loop() {
  float temp = readTemperature();
  Serial.print(">temp:");
  Serial.println(temp);          // → >temp:23.5
  delay(100);
}

Plot several series at once (one > line each):

Serial.print(">temp:");  Serial.println(temp);
Serial.print(">humidity:"); Serial.println(hum);

Attach a unit (appears in the legend):

Serial.print(">temp:");
Serial.print(temp);
Serial.println("§°C");           // → >temp:23.5§°C

Stamp points with the board's own clock:

Serial.print(">temp:");
Serial.print(millis());
Serial.print(":");
Serial.println(temp);            // → >temp:1627551892437:23.5

Plot an XY scatter point (e.g. a position):

Serial.print(">pos:");
Serial.print(x);
Serial.print(":");
Serial.print(y);
Serial.println("|xy");           // → >pos:12:8|xy

Show a text status as a labelled card (not plotted):

Serial.println(">state:Running|t");

Tip: mix freely. Lines without a leading > (like Serial.println("Booting…")) still show up in the Serial Monitor but are skipped by the plotter, so a single sketch can log status text and stream plottable data on the same port.

IntelliSense (code completion)

When you select a board, the extension can generate VS Code's c_cpp_properties.json with the right include paths and defines for that board — so go-to-definition, hover docs, and autocompletion work for the Arduino core and your libraries. Install Microsoft's C/C++ extension to get the most out of it. This stays on automatically (arduinoCli.intellisense.autoConfigure) and refreshes when the board or libraries change.

Debugging

On boards with debug support (and an installed debug adapter such as Cortex-Debug), the Debug button starts a real debug session: breakpoints, stepping, and variable inspection. The extension auto-detects the adapter; you can override everything via the arduinoCli.debug.* settings. The Debug button only appears for boards that support it.

Settings

You can leave everything at its defaults. To tweak, open Settings and search for "Arduino Sketch Studio":

Works great with Blocks Editor

Blocks Editor (linucs.blocks-editor) is the other half of the story. It's a visual, Scratch-like editor that lets you build programs by dragging blocks instead of typing C++, and it generates real Arduino code under the hood.

But generated code is just a file until something runs it — and that's where this extension comes in. Blocks Editor hands the sketch to this extension's Compile and Upload buttons, which build it and flash it to your board. Together they're a complete loop: drag blocks → compile → upload → watch the serial output. Drawn as a picture:

Blocks Editor              Arduino Sketch Studio           Your board
  drag blocks  ──►  generates .ino  ──►  compile + upload  ──►  runs
                                          serial monitor   ◄──  prints

Each one is fully standalone, so you can use either alone — but they're designed to be two halves of one workflow: Blocks Editor builds, this extension runs.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.120 or newer
• arduino-cli installed and on your PATH (or set arduinoCli.path) — see Step 1.
• For debugging: a board with debug support and a debug adapter (e.g. the Cortex-Debug extension).
• For IntelliSense: Microsoft's C/C++ extension.

Good to know

• Nothing runs until you need it. The extension doesn't spawn the daemon on startup — it starts on the first command that needs it. If arduino-cli isn't installed, you'll get one clear message instead of a noisy error, and you pay nothing if you never use it.
• It stays out of your way. This is a thin wrapper: it pushes defaults and policy into arduino-cli's own configuration rather than reimplementing them. Your builds match what arduino-cli (and the Arduino IDE) produce.
• On Apple Silicon Macs, some classic AVR toolchains are x86-only and need Rosetta 2 (softwareupdate --install-rosetta) to compile/upload.

For developers

npm install
./scripts/fetch-protos.sh    # vendor the arduino-cli proto definitions (already included)
npm run compile              # typecheck + lint
npm run build                # bundle to dist/extension.js

Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host. The extension loads the vendored arduino-cli .proto files at runtime via @grpc/proto-loader (no codegen step). See CLAUDE.md for architecture notes and PUBLISHING.md for the release process.

Community

Questions, ideas, or just want to show what you built? Join the GitHub Discussions.

Contributing

Contributions and bug reports are welcome — open an issue or pull request on the repository.

License

MIT