Claude Code Companion for VS Code

Claude Code Companion is an extension for Anthropic's official Claude Code. It is built on the same public @anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdk. It adds its own panel that runs its own chat and shows the parts of a long run that you usually cannot see: what the subagents are doing right now, what the model is thinking, how the plan is going, and how much each step cost.

What only this panel does

• Live Subagent Tree. A big task can start smaller agents to do parts of the work. This panel shows them all in a tree. For each one you see its name, if it is still working, and how many tokens it used. You can stop any one of them, so you always know what is going on.

  

• Live Thinking. You can watch the model think while it works. The words come in slowly, so a long thought is easy to read. You can show one line, a few lines, or all of it.

  

• Task Planner. The model makes a to-do list and keeps it at the top of the chat. Each step gets a check when it is done. When it finishes, you can see how long each step took and how many tokens it used.

  

• Stop All. Some agents keep working in the background after a turn ends. One button stops all of them at once.

• Send Modes - Steer, Interrupt, Queue. You can send a message while the model is still working. Steer adds it to the work now. Interrupt stops the work now. Queue waits until the work is done. You pick the one you want for each message.

• Remote Control. Turn on one switch to open the session in the Claude app on your phone. From the phone you can type, allow a tool, change the model, or stop the work. It is full control, not just reading.

Everything the official extension does, too

• Chat in an editor tab, with live Markdown replies and code blocks you can copy
• Asks you before it runs a tool
• Shows file changes as a diff, and lets you undo them
• Plan mode: you see and agree the plan before the work starts
• Slash commands - agents, skills, and more
• Add files with @, paste or drop images, and send the file you have open
• Answer the model's questions right in the panel
• Shows the cost, the tokens, and how full the context is
• Past sessions: open, rename, and go back to them
• Voice input (dictation)
• Follows your VS Code theme, light or dark

Small things you feel every day

• Web search with its sources. When the model searches the web, you see how many sources it found and which sites they came from. Click one to open it.
• File names you can click. When the model writes a file name in its answer, the panel checks that the file is really there and makes it a link. Click it to open the file, at the right line.
• A line where the chat was compacted. When old messages are summarised to free up room, you see where it happened and how much was saved.
• You know it is waiting, not stuck. If the model has to wait or try again, the panel says that instead of looking frozen.
• Your own answer to a question. Every question card has an "Other" row, so you are never stuck with only the options the model thought of.
• Click any image to see it big.

The settings menu

Open the settings menu in the message box to set:

• Model - all the models Claude Code offers, plus other Anthropic models you add yourself (see claudeCodeCompanion.olderModels below).
• Reasoning effort - how hard the model thinks, from low to extra high.
• Answer style - Default, Concise, Explanatory or Learning. Concise trims the talking rather than the work, Explanatory says why as it goes, and Learning teaches while it works and asks you to write some of the code yourself. It is chosen as a session starts, so a change applies from the next one.
• Sending mid-turn - Steer, Interrupt or Queue (see above).

• Appearance - turn parts of the panel on or off:
  • Activity strip - the live strip and subagent list above the box
  • Live plan pin - keep the plan at the top while the model works
  • Cost counter - what this session has cost
  • Token counter - how many tokens it has used
  • Context meter - how full the context is
  • Plan limit meters - your 5-hour and weekly limits
  • Tool call chain - open tool calls instead of folding them
  • Microphone - speak into the message box instead of typing. Off until you turn it on; see the last section of this page for why.

Next to the menu you can also set the permission mode - ask before each tool, allow edits, or allow everything.

What it needs

Claude Code itself. If you use the official extension, you already have it. If not, install it once:

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

or with npm:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

If your copy is in a special place, set claudeCodeCompanion.claudePath in Settings.

Getting started

Click the Claude Code Companion icon on the left side bar and start a new session. It opens in an editor tab. You can also press Ctrl+Alt+C (Cmd+Alt+C on a Mac).

Settings

• claudeCodeCompanion.claudePath - where the claude program is, if it is in a special place.
• claudeCodeCompanion.olderModels - extra model names to add under the ones Claude Code shows.
• claudeCodeCompanion.dictationLanguage - the language the microphone listens for.
• claudeCodeCompanion.remoteAtStartup - open every new session on claude.ai right away, so you can read and answer it from your phone. Off by default. Read this before you turn it on: it lets your phone control this computer, and anyone signed in to that account can control it too.

Your Claude account, and what this does with it

This panel is a window onto Claude Code, not a second way into Claude. Nearly everything here works by running the claude program exactly as Anthropic published it, and drawing what it reports.

• It never asks you for a password, a token or an API key, and it reads none to run a session. Signing in happens in Claude Code's own flow, in your browser, on Anthropic's pages. Your usage is billed to you by Anthropic under the plan you already have.
• There is no account here and no server here. This extension has no backend, nothing to sign up for, and nowhere of its own to send anything.
• No telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting. There is no such library in it, and the panel itself cannot reach the network at all - it is loaded under a default-src 'none' Content Security Policy.
• Nothing of yours is uploaded, indexed or copied anywhere beyond what Claude Code itself does with the folder you opened.
• What it keeps, it keeps on this machine, in VS Code's own storage: your settings, the model list, the rate-limit figures on the bar, and any image you drop on the message box. That is the whole list.

Two features are the exception, and both are off until you turn them on:

• Microphone (Settings > Appearance) sends what you say to Anthropic's speech service, using the Claude sign-in already on this machine.
• Remote (the button by the message box) opens a session on claude.ai under that same sign-in, so you can read and answer it from your phone. It is a two-way channel: anyone signed in to that account can then drive this computer.

Both reach api.anthropic.com and nowhere else. Those two, and Claude Code itself, are every outbound connection this extension is capable of making.

Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Anthropic. Claude and Claude Code are Anthropic's.