LMAgentChat VS Code Extension

LMAgentChat is a VS Code extension for local and remote coding assistance. It provides a custom chat panel, optional native chat participant integration, provider-backed inline completions, workspace-aware context injection, and a small planner/executor agent loop.

What It Does

• Multi-provider chat with LM Studio, Ollama, and OpenAI-compatible endpoints.
• Two chat surfaces:
  • A custom webview chat panel and sidebar view.
  • A native VS Code chat participant when the host build supports the chat API, with fallback to the custom panel.
• Chat modes in the custom panel: Ask, Plan, Build, and Agent.
• Inline code completions backed by the selected provider instead of placeholder suggestions.
• Workspace-aware prompt enrichment through mention tokens, attachments, diagnostics, and codebase retrieval.
• A separate Run Agent Task command that runs a planner/executor loop over structured actions.
• LM Studio MCP integration passthrough through lmagentchat.lmstudio.integrations.

Core Features

Chat UI

• Open the custom chat panel with LMAgentChat: Open Chat.
• Focus the sidebar chat view with LMAgentChat: Focus Sidebar Chat.
• Open the settings webview with LMAgentChat: Open Settings Page.
• Use the chat composer to:
  • upload file attachments,
  • attach currently open editors,
  • insert mention tokens from the context picker,
  • stream responses with stop support,
  • browse and rename chat sessions,
  • export or clear the current session.

Native Chat

• LMAgentChat: Open Native Chat opens VS Code native chat when available.
• If native chat APIs are unavailable in the host build, the command falls back to the custom chat panel.
• The native chat participant supports /explain, /fix, /test, and /doc request styles.

Inline Completions

• Inline completions are enabled by lmagentchat.enableAutocomplete.
• Requests are throttled, cached, and built from:
  • current file context,
  • visible editors and tabs,
  • prefix and suffix code windows.

Context Providers

The custom chat input supports mention tokens. Tokens are resolved into prompt context and stripped from the user-facing request text before inference.

• @currentFile: active editor content.
• @open: open files from visible editors and tabs.
• @open:N: open files with an explicit cap.
• @tree: workspace tree snapshot.
• @tree:query: narrowed tree context.
• @problems: diagnostics from the active file.
• @problems:workspace: diagnostics across the workspace.
• @terminal: active terminal metadata.
• @prompt and @rules: prompt/rules-style files in the workspace.
• @codebase:query: ranked snippet retrieval from a lightweight local codebase index.

Sessions And Storage

• Chat sessions are persisted under the extension global storage path.
• The current build uses JSON-backed storage for active persistence.
• chat.storageBackend exposes json and sqlite, but SQLite is currently forced back to JSON at runtime.
• Older chat messages can be archived and summarized based on these settings:
  • lmagentchat.chat.memoryBufferSize
  • lmagentchat.chat.compactionThreshold
  • lmagentchat.chat.enableAutoSummarize

Agent Capabilities

There are two related agent surfaces:

1. Agent mode in the custom chat panel.
2. LMAgentChat: Run Agent Task, which runs the standalone planner/executor loop.

The standalone loop can plan and execute structured actions such as:

• read_file
• write_file
• search
• run_command
• refactor_code
• summarize
• ask_user
• done

run_command is gated by lmagentchat.agent.allowRunCommands.

Command Surface

The extension contributes the following command groups.

Chat And Settings

• Activate Extension
• Open Chat
• Open Native Chat
• Focus Chat
• Focus Sidebar Chat
• Open Settings Page
• Run Agent Task

Refactoring And Analysis

• Refactor Code
• Explain Code
• Simplify Code
• Add Type Annotations
• Optimize Imports
• Analyze Code
• Find Bugs
• Optimize Code
• Security Audit
• Performance Review

Testing

• Generate Tests
• Generate Unit Tests
• Generate Integration Tests
• Generate E2E Tests
• Generate Mocks
• Generate Mock Data
• Generate Fixtures
• Run Tests
• Debug Test
• Coverage Report
• Fix Failing Tests

Documentation, Context, And Git

• Generate Documentation
• Generate README
• Update Documentation
• Generate Changelog
• Export to Markdown
• Show Context
• Update Context
• Clear Context
• Export Context
• Show Git Context
• Analyze Recent Commits
• Branch Overview
• Analyze Git Diff

Configuration

Common settings:

{
  "lmagentchat.provider": "lmstudio",
  "lmagentchat.lmstudio.url": "http://localhost:1234",
  "lmagentchat.lmstudio.apiKey": "",
  "lmagentchat.lmstudio.integrations": [],
  "lmagentchat.lmstudio.autoSelectModel": true,
  "lmagentchat.lmstudio.currentModel": "",
  "lmagentchat.ollama.url": "http://localhost:11434",
  "lmagentchat.ollama.currentModel": "",
  "lmagentchat.openai.url": "https://api.openai.com",
  "lmagentchat.openai.apiKey": "",
  "lmagentchat.openai.currentModel": "",
  "lmagentchat.enableAutocomplete": true,
  "lmagentchat.agent.maxSteps": 8,
  "lmagentchat.agent.allowRunCommands": false,
  "lmagentchat.agentMode.requireCompatibleModel": false,
  "lmagentchat.chat.memoryBufferSize": 20,
  "lmagentchat.chat.compactionThreshold": 40,
  "lmagentchat.chat.enableAutoSummarize": true,
  "lmagentchat.chat.maxRenderedMessages": 120,
  "lmagentchat.chat.storageBackend": "json"
}

LM Studio MCP Integrations

lmagentchat.lmstudio.integrations is passed through to LM Studio chat requests as the integrations array.

Example values:

["mcp/playwright"]

[
  {
    "type": "ephemeral_mcp",
    "server_label": "huggingface",
    "server_url": "https://huggingface.co/mcp"
  }
]

The extension validates that this setting is a JSON array before saving it from the settings panel.

Development

Install dependencies and compile:

npm install
npm run compile

During development:

npm run watch

Run tests:

npm test

Project Notes

• The settings page is a custom webview and includes built-in setup and command documentation.
• The chat panel uses a windowed renderer for long conversations to avoid mounting the full DOM history.
• The floating scroll-to-bottom button appears when the conversation is no longer near the latest message.

Additional Docs

• CHANGELOG.md
• AGENT_FRAMEWORK.md
• CONTEXT_ARCHITECTURE.md
• CONTRIBUTING.md

License

MIT. See LICENSE.