Agent Tasks

Visualize autonomous agent workflow artifacts (plan.md, task.md, walkthrough.md) in the VS Code sidebar. Works with any workflow that writes artifacts to .agent/ or .gw/ directories — including the autonomous-workflow skill.

Features

• Agent Tasks sidebar — browse all in-flight and completed agent tasks by branch
• Task progress — see phase, status (in-progress/blocked/completed), and sub-tasks at a glance
• Plan viewer — inspect the plan summary, files to create/modify, and complexity estimate
• Walkthrough & plan auto-open — when a walkthrough.md or plan.md is created, the extension opens it automatically in Markdown Preview (each toggleable)
• Configurable directories — scan .agent/, .gw/, or any custom directory name
• Sort — sort by date, name, or status; ascending or descending
• Sessions panel — view Claude Code session history for the current workspace and sibling worktrees; click to open the transcript or resume the session in a terminal

Install

Search for Agent Tasks in the VS Code Marketplace or install by ID:

mthines.agent-tasks

Usage

1. Open a workspace that contains a .agent/ or .gw/ directory with artifacts.
2. Click the Agent Tasks icon in the Activity Bar.
3. Expand a branch entry to see tasks, plan, and walkthrough.

Sessions

The Sessions panel (below the Agent Tasks view in the same activity-bar container) lists Claude Code session history for the current workspace.

How it works

Sessions are read from ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-cwd>/ — where <encoded-cwd> is your absolute workspace path with every non-alphanumeric character replaced by -. For example /Users/you/myrepo.git/main becomes -Users-you-myrepo-git-main.

Each session entry shows:

• Label — the first user message, whitespace-collapsed and truncated
• Description — relative time (now / 5m / 3h / 2d / Apr 17)
• Icon — reflects a real run-state derived from JSONL turn analysis combined with file mtime:
  • 🔵 Blue pulse — running: claude is mid-turn (last assistant.stop_reason ≠ end_turn or a follow-up user event after a turn end), AND the file was written in the last 30 seconds.
  • 🟢 Green chat-bubble — needs-input: claude finished a turn (last assistant.stop_reason = end_turn OR a system subtype = turn_duration event followed the last user input). Waiting for your reply.
  • 🟡 Yellow warning — stalled: mid-turn JSONL state, but no writes for 30 s – 5 min. Claude likely died mid-response.
  • ⚪️ Gray history — idle: nothing relevant in the last hour.

These states come from real JSONL semantics, not just file activity, so they're stable across paused sessions, slow-tool calls, and external editor saves.

The panel auto-refreshes every 15 seconds while visible (and immediately on JSONL writes via a 50 ms-debounced file watcher) so transitions between states feel realtime.

Hover over a session for a tooltip with last activity, branch, message count, session ID, CWD, and file path.

Running section

When at least one Claude session is currently active — either with a claude --resume terminal open in this VS Code window, or with JSONL activity in the last 2 minutes (covering other windows / external terminals) — a pinned Running (N) section appears at the top of the panel. Click any item to focus its terminal (same window) or open a fresh resume terminal (cross-window). The section is hidden entirely when nothing is running, so the panel stays uncluttered. Sessions still appear in their worktree group below — Running is a shortcut, not a replacement.

Worktree grouping

When the workspace is part of a multi-worktree setup (gw-managed or plain git), sessions are grouped by worktree. The current worktree is pinned to the top, marked (current), and expanded by default; other worktrees are collapsed. Discovery priority: .gw/config.json (sibling worktrees) → git worktree list --porcelain → just the workspace path. Single-worktree workspaces show a flat list.

Sessions launched from sub-directories of a worktree (e.g. apps/api/ inside feat/foo/) are also surfaced and bucketed under their parent worktree by reading the cwd field on the session events.

Filtering

Use the filter icon in the Sessions panel header (or the command Toggle Sessions Scope) to switch between:

• All worktrees (default) — every worktree's sessions, grouped, current first
• Current worktree only — flat list of just this worktree's sessions

The choice is persisted in agentTasks.sessions.scope.

Searching

Use the search icon in the Sessions panel header (or the command Find Session…) to open a QuickPick across every session for this workspace — regardless of the scope filter. Type to fuzzy-match against the message title, branch, or CWD; press Enter to open the picked session via the same openWith setting (resume by default).

Click behavior

Clicking a session does one of two things depending on the agentTasks.sessions.openWith setting:

In resume mode the extension tracks which terminal belongs to which session within this VS Code window. Clicking the same session again focuses the existing terminal tab instead of spawning a duplicate. Closing the terminal removes the association, so a subsequent click starts a fresh process.

Cross-window terminal tracking isn't possible — the VS Code extension API is window-scoped. If you've resumed the same session in another VS Code window, clicking here will start a second claude --resume against the same JSONL. Claude Code itself handles this gracefully but you'll have two processes appending to the same file.

Note: resume mode requires claude to be on your PATH. If claude is not installed or not found, the terminal will show an error — the extension does not validate the command.

Activation note

As of this release, the extension also activates via onStartupFinished so the Sessions panel works in any workspace — even those without .agent/ or .gw/ directories. This means the extension is active in all workspaces. The startup overhead is minimal (~50 ms). If you only want it active in agent-workflow repos, remove onStartupFinished from activationEvents in a local extension build.

Settings

Configurable directories

By default the extension scans .agent/ (primary) and .gw/ (legacy fallback). You can change this:

// .vscode/settings.json
{
  "agentTasks.directories": [".agent", ".gw"]
}

To add a custom directory:

{
  "agentTasks.directories": [".agent", ".workflow", ".gw"]
}

If you set the array to [], the extension silently falls back to the defaults [".agent", ".gw"].

Note: Adding a new directory name requires a VS Code window reload to activate the extension in workspaces that only contain the new directory (because activationEvents are static). The built-in defaults .agent and .gw activate automatically.

Migrating from gw.* settings

If you previously used vscode-gw (gw Worktrees) with Agent Tasks, the settings have moved to the agentTasks.* namespace. Re-configure your preferences:

• gw.agentTasksSortBy → agentTasks.sortBy
• gw.agentTasksSortOrder → agentTasks.sortOrder
• gw.autoOpenWalkthrough → agentTasks.autoOpenWalkthrough
• gw.openMarkdownInPreview → agentTasks.openMarkdownInPreview

Commands

Logging

The extension writes structured timestamped logs to a dedicated output channel — open it via View → Output → mthines.agent-tasks. The channel records activation, command invocations, watcher rebuilds, session refresh events, terminal lifecycle (create / focus existing / close), and errors. Useful when reporting issues or sanity-checking why a session doesn't appear.

Artifacts recognized

The extension reads:

• task.md — task progress with phase, in-progress markers, sub-tasks, blockers, decisions
• plan.md — plan frontmatter, summary, files to create/modify, complexity
• walkthrough.md — post-implementation summary and files-changed table

These are written by the autonomous-workflow skill's companion skills (create-plan, create-walkthrough).

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85.0 or later
• A workspace with .agent/ or .gw/ artifact directories (or custom via agentTasks.directories)