Local IDE awareness for bot-relay-mcp: subscribes to your agent's inbox over MCP, surfaces pending mail in the status bar, and (optionally) auto-types `inbox` into the integrated terminal so Claude Code wakes up when something arrives.
Installation
Launch VS Code Quick Open (Ctrl+P), paste the following command, and press enter.
A VSCode extension that subscribes to a bot-relay-mcp agent's inbox over MCP and surfaces pending mail in the status bar (and optionally as toasts). Local-only, no telemetry, no cloud.
Install (dev / pre-marketplace)
cd extensions/vscode
npm install
npm run compile
# In VSCode: F5 to launch the Extension Development Host with this extension loaded.
Marketplace install steps land here once published — see PUBLISH.md for the publish workflow.
Configuration
Settings are under bot-relay.tether.*:
Setting
Default
What it does
endpoint
http://127.0.0.1:3777
Relay HTTP endpoint. The extension speaks MCP over Streamable HTTP to this URL.
agentName
(env: RELAY_AGENT_NAME)
Which agent's inbox to subscribe to. Empty + no env = idle.
agentToken
(env: RELAY_AGENT_TOKEN)
Optional bearer token for authenticated relays. Sent as X-Agent-Token header.
autoInjectInbox
false
On every notification, type inbox\n into the matching integrated terminal. Useful when the terminal name matches the agent name (Claude Code sets the terminal title via --name). Off by default to avoid surprising ambient typing.
notificationLevel
event
event = toast on every change. summary = collapsed digest every 5 min. none = silent (status bar only).
VSCode setting > env var > default.
What it does
On startup, reads config + env, connects to the relay at endpoint/mcp.
Subscribes to relay://inbox/<agentName>.
Status bar (left) shows: Tether: <pending_count> | last <relative time>. Color: gray for 0 pending, yellow 1-3, red 4+.
On every notifications/resources/updated event for that URI, re-fetches the resource snapshot and (per notificationLevel) emits a toast.
Click the status bar → opens a read-only webview with the last message preview + a link to the full dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:3777.
If autoInjectInbox=true, also writes inbox\n to the integrated terminal whose name matches agentName (or the active terminal if no match).
What it doesn't do
No interactive features (no send_message, no acknowledge buttons). v0.1 is read-only awareness; interaction lands in v2 along with the rest of the paid Tether Cloud surface — see ../../docs/tether-roadmap.md.
No cross-machine sync. The extension only speaks to a relay running on 127.0.0.1 (or whatever you configure as endpoint). There is no federation, no hosted broker.
No telemetry, no analytics, no third-party calls.
Troubleshooting
The extension publishes a Tether for bot-relay-mcp output channel — every connection attempt + error lands there. View → Output → "Tether for bot-relay-mcp" in the dropdown.
Status bar stuck on "Tether: starting...": the connect call is in progress. Check the output channel for connecting to ....
"Tether: idle": agentName is empty in both VSCode setting and env. Set bot-relay.tether.agentName (or export RELAY_AGENT_NAME before launching VSCode).
Repeated reconnect attempts: the relay daemon is unreachable. Check curl http://127.0.0.1:3777/health and relay doctor.
License
MIT — same as bot-relay-mcp. See repo root LICENSE.
