Vibe Review

Review your AI agent's code the way you review a pull request, without leaving VS Code or pushing anything.

Leave comments on your uncommitted changes in VS Code and click Submit. Your coding agent in the terminal (Claude Code, Codex CLI or GitHub Copilot CLI) picks up the comments, fixes the code, replies on each thread, and waits for your next round. When you're happy, click Approve.

See it in action

1. Comment on a changed line, the same way you would in a GitHub pull request.
2. Submit the review. The agent waiting in the terminal picks it up immediately.
3. The agent fixes the code and replies on the thread. The thread turns Active.
4. Resolve the thread to accept the fix, or reply to send it back.

_{A real recording with GitHub Copilot CLI. The part where the agent is working is sped up.}

agent edits code → finishes its turn → waits for you ⏸
  → you comment in VS Code → Submit → agent fixes the code and replies on threads → waits again ⏸
  → you Approve → agent stops ✅

• Fully local. No accounts, no servers, no GitHub PRs. Reviews are plain JSON files inside your repo, hidden from git.
• Works like a PR review. Comments on changed lines, pending drafts, threaded replies, resolve and reopen.
• Screenshots and formatting. Paste screenshots and rich text into comments. The agent gets the images too.
• Works with the agent you already use. Claude Code, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, or all three.

Contents

• Requirements
• Quick start (about 5 minutes)
• Your first review
• Everyday use
• Settings
• Troubleshooting
• Uninstall
• Privacy
• How it works
• Known limitations
• Building from source

Requirements

Tested on macOS and Linux. Windows is untested.

Quick start (about 5 minutes)

You only do steps 1–4 once. You do step 5 once in each project.

Step 1 — Download the extension

1. Go to the Releases page of this repository.
2. Under the latest release, open Assets and download the file ending in .vsix (for example vibe-review-0.1.0.vsix).

Step 2 — Install it in VS Code

Choose one of these:

Option A: from inside VS Code (easiest)

1. Open the Extensions view: click the four-squares icon in the left sidebar, or press Cmd+Shift+X (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+X (Windows/Linux).
2. Click the ··· (More Actions) button at the top right of the Extensions view.
3. Choose Install from VSIX….
4. Select the .vsix file you downloaded.
5. Wait for the "Completed installing extension" notification.

Option B: from a terminal

code --install-extension ~/Downloads/vibe-review-0.1.0.vsix

code: command not found? In VS Code, open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P), run Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH, open a new terminal and try again. Or use Option A.

Step 3 — Connect your agent

This step teaches your agent to wait for your review and to reply to your comments. You run it from VS Code.

1. In VS Code, open your project folder (File → Open Folder…). It must be a git repository.
2. Open the Command Palette: Cmd+Shift+P (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows/Linux).
3. Type Vibe Review: Set Up Agents and press Enter.
4. A list of agents appears, all ticked. Untick the agents you don't use and press Enter.
5. A dialog lists every file that will be changed. Click Install.
6. A notification confirms the setup.

You don't need to repeat this step for other projects: the setup applies to every project on your machine. Each config file is backed up first.

Step 4 — Restart your agent

Agents read hooks and MCP servers only when they start, so restart any open agent session.

1. In each terminal running an agent, quit it: type /exit, or press Ctrl+C twice.
2. Start it again from your project folder:

   cd path/to/your/project
   claude      # or: codex, or: copilot
   

3. Codex CLI only: Codex won't run new hooks until you trust them. Type /hooks and trust the two vibe-review hooks.
4. Check it worked: type /mcp in the agent. You should see vibe-review in the list, connected.

Step 5 — Turn on Review Mode (once per project)

Review Mode tells the agent to wait for your review after every turn in this project, as long as VS Code is open on it.

1. Open the Source Control view: click the branch icon in the left sidebar, or press Ctrl+Shift+G.
2. Find the Vibe Review section in that view. It lists your uncommitted files. If it's collapsed, click its title.
3. Turn Review Mode on. Either:
   • hover the Vibe Review title and click the crossed-out eye icon (Turn Review Mode On), or
   • click Review: Off at the bottom-left of the status bar and choose Turn Review Mode On.

The status bar now shows 👁 Review: On. You're ready. 🎉

In projects where Review Mode is off, the hooks do nothing, so leaving them installed is harmless. The same goes for projects that aren't open in VS Code: if you close VS Code with Review Mode still on, your agent simply doesn't wait.

Your first review

1. Ask your agent for a change in its terminal as usual, e.g. "add input validation to the signup form".
2. Wait for it to finish. Instead of stopping, the agent now pauses. In VS Code:
   • the status bar turns yellow: 🔔 Claude Code waiting for review
   • a notification says "… finished and is waiting for your review."
3. Open the changes. In Source Control → Vibe Review, click a file. A side-by-side diff opens (last commit on the left, your working copy on the right).
4. Comment on a line. Hover a changed line on the right side. A + appears in the gutter next to the line numbers. Click it, or drag over several lines first to comment on a range.
5. Write your comment and click Add Comment, or press Cmd+Enter / Ctrl+Enter. Markdown works, and you can paste screenshots, see Screenshots and rich text. It's marked Pending: the agent doesn't see it yet, the same as a pending PR review. Add as many comments as you like across files.
6. Submit. Click the send icon (➤) in the Vibe Review title bar, or click the status bar and choose Submit Review. You can type an optional overall comment, then press Enter.
7. Watch the agent work. It gets every comment with its file, lines and code, makes the fixes, and replies on each thread. Replies appear right in your editor, and the thread becomes Active, waiting for you to accept it.
8. Accept or push back. Happy with a fix? Click Resolve (✓) on the thread. Not yet? Reply on it: the thread goes back to Pending. Then Submit for another round, or click Approve in the Vibe Review title bar to let the agent stop.

Tip: you don't have to wait for the agent to pause. If it has already stopped, submit your review anyway, then type anything (e.g. review) in the agent's terminal. The review is attached to that message.

Everyday use

Buttons

Hover the Vibe Review section title in Source Control to see its buttons. The same actions are in the status bar menu (click the Review: item at the bottom-left).

Comments and threads

Each thread has a state, shown in its header and in the Vibe Review tree:

Only you can resolve a thread. When the agent finishes a thread, it marks it addressed, which makes it Active. Replying to a resolved thread reopens it as Pending, like on GitHub.

In a thread, your comments show your GitHub avatar (if you're signed in to GitHub in VS Code, otherwise a blue placeholder) and the agent's replies have a purple robot avatar labelled AI reply, so it's easy to see where each message starts.

Hover a comment or thread to see its actions:

• Reply: add to the conversation. Replies on a thread are pending until you Submit, too.
• Edit / Delete: on your own comments while they're still Pending. Once submitted, they're part of the record.
• Resolve / Reopen: accept a thread, or bring it back.

Screenshots and rich text

• Screenshots and images: paste an image into the comment box (e.g. after Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+4 on macOS or Win+Shift+S on Windows). You can also paste or drag image files (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP) from Finder or Explorer. The image is saved in .vibe-review/attachments/, shows inline in the comment, and is sent to the agent, which opens it to see what you mean.
• Rich text: text copied from a browser, docs or chat keeps its formatting. Bold, links, lists and code are converted to Markdown. To paste plain text instead, click the small paste widget that appears after pasting and choose Insert Plain Text. Code copied from VS Code always pastes as plain text.
• Markdown: you can type **bold**, `code`, fenced code blocks, lists and links directly.

Status bar

Stopping a waiting agent

• Click Approve or Discard Review in VS Code, or
• press Esc (or Ctrl+C) in the agent's terminal, or
• turn Review Mode off, or
• close VS Code (or the window for this project). The agent only waits while VS Code is open on the project, or
• wait. After 30 minutes the agent stops by itself, and your pending comments are kept. See Settings.

Settings

Open Settings (Cmd+, / Ctrl+,) and search for Vibe Review.

Troubleshooting

Uninstall

One click: open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P), run Vibe Review: Uninstall (Remove Hooks, MCP Server & Data)…, and choose:

• Uninstall Everything removes the hooks and MCP server from every agent, deletes ~/.vibe-review/, deletes this project's review data (.vibe-review/), and uninstalls the extension.
• Only Remove Agent Setup removes the hooks and MCP server from every agent and deletes ~/.vibe-review/, but keeps the extension. Run Set Up Agents later to add them back.

You can also find it in the Vibe Review panel's ··· menu and in the status bar menu. Your other agent settings are left untouched, and each changed file is backed up as <file>.vibe-review.bak. Restart any running agent sessions afterwards.

Uninstalled from the Extensions view instead? That's fine: when VS Code finishes uninstalling, it runs a cleanup that removes the hooks and MCP server from your agents automatically. VS Code may wait until it next restarts to do this. Review data in your projects (.vibe-review/ folders) is kept. Delete those folders if you no longer need them.

Privacy

Everything runs on your machine. Vibe Review has no telemetry and no accounts of its own, and your code and comments never leave your computer. The only network request is VS Code loading your GitHub avatar image from avatars.githubusercontent.com when you're already signed in to GitHub. Turn off vibeReview.useGitHubAvatar to avoid it.

• Review data, including pasted images, lives in <your-project>/.vibe-review/. It's added to .git/info/exclude automatically, so it never appears in git status or gets committed. If a repository does contain a committed .vibe-review/ folder (for example, from someone else), the hooks and MCP server ignore it, so a cloned repo can't plant fake review comments for your agent.
• Your comments go only to the agent CLI running in your own terminal. That agent then sends them to its AI provider as part of the conversation, as it does with anything you type to it.

How it works

Known limitations

• Comments are allowed only on changed lines (working tree vs. HEAD, including untracked files), as in a PR.
• In multi-root workspaces, only the first git repository is reviewed.
• Claude Code and Copilot CLI end a turn after 8 hook-forced continuations in a row. Send any message to resume.
• The longest wait for one turn is 55 minutes, because agents cap how long a hook may run.

Building from source

Only needed if you want to change the extension or build the .vsix yourself.

git clone https://github.com/umerkk/vibe-review.git
cd vibe-review
npm install
npm test            # builds, then runs end-to-end tests (git repos, hook processes, MCP over stdio, setup)
npm run package     # → vibe-review-0.1.0.vsix
code --install-extension vibe-review-0.1.0.vsix

To debug, open the folder in VS Code and press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host.

Releasing

Releases are published by .github/workflows/release.yml:

npm version patch   # bumps package.json and creates tag v0.1.1
git push --follow-tags

The workflow tests and packages the extension, publishes it to the VS Code Marketplace via Trusted Publishing (OIDC, no token stored) and to Open VSX if OVSX_PAT is set, and creates a GitHub release with the .vsix attached. Running the workflow manually from the Actions tab is a dry run: it builds, tests and uploads the .vsix as an artifact without publishing.

License

MIT: free to use, modify and share.