Lookout

Every AI coding agent session at a glance: what is working, what needs you, and where.
Works with Claude Code, Codex and Copilot CLI.

What it does  |  Supported agents  |  Install  |  Commands  |  Documentation

Running several AI coding agents at once means clicking through tabs and terminals to find out which one finished and which one is stuck on a question. Lookout keeps that answer on one board in the side bar, takes you to the right tab or terminal with one keystroke, and finds any conversation, running or not, by a word you remember from it. Claude Code in its VS Code panel or a terminal, Codex in its extension's panel, VS Code's Chat or a terminal, Copilot in VS Code's Chat or a terminal: one board, one jump key, one search, each agent with its own colour and boat once more than one is on the board. It reads only what the agents already write on disk.

What it does

• Board. The Lookout view in the activity bar. At the top, the harbour: a night scene where every session is a boat, placed by its state and by how long it has been there. Below, one card per session, grouped into Needs you, Finished, Working and Idle.
• Cards. Each card shows the session's title, its time in state, what it asks you when it waits (the permission with its command or file, the question with its answers, the plan to approve), its tool calls per minute, how full its context window is, its tokens and their price, its project, worktree and git branch, where it runs, and its model with the reasoning effort of its last reply. A click jumps to the session; a click on its title renames it.
• Jump. Ctrl+Alt+J lists the sessions, the ones that need you first, and brings the chosen one's tab or terminal to the front, in this VS Code window or in another on the same machine. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J goes straight to the session that has waited longest.
• Notify. A notification with a Jump button when a session starts to wait for you, saying why, and optionally when one finishes. While VS Code is not in front, the same notification shows on your desktop, with a sound if you want one.
• Search. A box above the cards looks through every conversation, live and earlier, for the words you remember, with since:, before:, project:, branch: and file: to narrow it. A search page gives the matches room to read, and a conversation tab shows any session whole, scrolled to the match.
• Earlier, favourites and archive. Under the live sessions, the ones that are not running, of this window's folders or of every project on the machine, 20 to a page; a click resumes one. A star keeps a session at the top of the board; an archive button puts one away.
• Usage. Every limit of the account, named as the agent's own panel names it, on the board and in the status bar: the 5-hour window as a coloured bar with the time to its reset. Lookout says so once per window when the 5-hour window reaches 70% and 90%, and the week 90%.
• No setup. Lookout reads the state the agents already record on disk. It installs no hooks, reads no credentials, and sends nothing off the machine.

What Lookout shows describes each of these in full, and the session states.

Supported agents

Each agent has its own colour and boat once more than one is on the board. Where an agent lacks an action, Lookout leaves it out rather than offering one that fails. Supported agents says what each column means, where each agent runs (its panel, VS Code's Chat, a terminal, a script, the desktop app, the cloud) and what a click does there, and what applies to some agents only.

Install

Install from the Visual Studio Marketplace, or from Open VSX, the registry that Cursor, Kiro, Antigravity, VSCodium and other VS Code forks read:

Or build it from source:

git clone https://github.com/nimrod-teich/lookout.git
cd lookout
npm install
npm run package
code --install-extension lookout-*.vsix

Updating an installed copy restarts the extension host, which ends the agent sessions that window hosts. Update when they are idle.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.94 or newer.
• The extension runs where the agent runs: Linux, macOS or Windows, including WSL and remote hosts (SSH, containers), since it lives on the remote side there.
• A recent version of a supported agent.

On SSH and container remotes Lookout runs on the remote machine, where none of your desktop is, so desktop notifications are off there; the notification inside the VS Code window still comes. Under WSL they reach the Windows desktop.

Commands

Every setting, with its default, is in Settings.

Documentation

Development

Node 22 or newer. npm run check, npm run lint and npm test are what CI runs; npm run build bundles to dist/, and F5 in VS Code runs the extension in an Extension Development Host. Development has the rest: the layout of the source, the board's preview page and its fixtures, how to add an agent, and how to release.

License

MIT

_{Lookout is an independent project, free and MIT. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic or any other agent vendor. If it saves you a tab hunt a day, sponsor it ♥.}