One Shell

Share code snippets with other developers on the same network — without leaving VS Code, and without setting anything up.

One Shell auto-discovers other VS Code instances running the extension on your local network (LAN) and lets you broadcast or privately reply with code snippets, inserted directly at your teammate's cursor.

How it works

1. Select some code in the editor
2. Right-click → Shell Options
3. Choose an action:
   • Share a Snippet — broadcasts the snippet to everyone on the network (the Primary Shell)
   • Primary Shell — browse everything shared with the group and insert it at your cursor
   • Reply to a Snippet — send a snippet privately to one specific peer (the Secondary Shell)
   • Secondary Shell — browse your private threads with individual peers

No servers, accounts, or configuration required — One Shell finds peers automatically using mDNS (Zeroconf) as soon as they're on the same network with the extension running.

Primary vs. Secondary Shell

Requirements

• All participants must be on the same LAN (or a network that allows mDNS/local multicast traffic)
• The extension must be installed and active on each participant's VS Code

Snippet retention & clearing up

By default, snippets are automatically cleared after 24 hours — you won't come back tomorrow to a shell full of yesterday's snippets. Change this with the oneShell.snippetRetentionHours setting in VS Code (Settings → search "One Shell"). Set it to 0 to keep snippets indefinitely instead.

You can also clear things manually at any time via Shell Options → Clear Primary Shell or Clear Secondary Shell (both ask for confirmation first).

Where snippets are stored

Snippets are saved locally as a plain JSON file, not encrypted, under VS Code's global storage folder for this extension (on Windows, typically under %APPDATA%\Code\User\globalStorage\). You can open, back up, or delete this file directly if you'd rather manage it by hand. Treat shared snippets like any other locally-cached text: anyone with access to your machine's filesystem can read it.

Known limitations

• LAN discovery only — no internet-based or Bluetooth/PAN discovery yet
• Some corporate or public Wi-Fi networks block the multicast traffic mDNS relies on; if peers aren't discovered within a few seconds, this is the most likely cause
• No end-to-end encryption yet — treat shared snippets as visible to anyone able to join the same local network

Feedback

This extension is under active development. Issues and suggestions are welcome via the repository issue tracker.