Claude CLI Companion

A VS Code extension for people who run the Claude Code CLI in a VS Code terminal.

It does three things:

1. Send code to Claude with a keybind, instead of copy-pasting.
2. Track Claude's edits in the status bar, and accept or reject them when you're ready.
3. Read Claude's plans as rendered markdown you can act on.

1. Send code to Claude

Select some lines and press Cmd+L (Ctrl+L on Windows/Linux).

The extension types @src/app.ts:42-58 into the Claude terminal and hands you the keyboard, so you can finish the sentence: "@src/app.ts:42-58 why does this re-render?" It does not press Enter.

Why a reference instead of the code itself: Claude Code expands @file:lines on its own, before the model ever sees it. No tool call, no pasted block, far fewer tokens.

Folders are expanded to the files inside them, skipping node_modules, .git, out, dist, .next, and build.

2. Review Claude's edits

Claude's edits are tracked quietly. The status bar shows Claude: N pending and nothing interrupts you.

Click the status bar to get a menu:

• View All Changes — every pending file in a single scrollable diff, opened only when you ask for it
• Accept All / Reject All — clear the queue in one go. Reject restores each file to its git HEAD content.
• Enable diff view — turn on automatic diffs, if you'd rather see each change as it happens
• Or pick a single file to open just its diff, then ✓ Accept / ↺ Reject from the editor title bar

So the usual loop is: let Claude work uninterrupted, glance at the count, View All Changes, Accept All, done.

Automatic diffs are off by default — they interrupt the flow when Claude is editing several files in a row. Turn them on from that menu, or with Claude Diff: Toggle Diff View.

Committing counts as accepting. Commit a file and it disappears from the count, whether you committed in VS Code or in another terminal. A file you committed and then edited again still differs from HEAD, so it stays pending.

This one needs a one-time setup step — see Setup.

3. Read Claude's plans

In plan mode, Claude writes its plan to ~/.claude/plans/. The extension opens it as an editor tab with a live markdown preview beside it.

Because it's a normal editor tab, Cmd+L works on it:

• Select part of the plan and press Cmd+L to send just those steps back — "reconsider step 3" without resending the whole plan.
• ▶ Build Plan sends the whole plan back and closes the tabs.
• ✕ Discard closes the tabs and sends nothing.

Both buttons appear as links at the top of the plan and in the editor title bar. Either way the file stays on disk — it's Claude's artifact, not something this extension deletes.

Multiple VS Code windows

~/.claude/plans/ is one shared folder, and every open window can see it. Older versions opened every plan in every window.

Now each window works out which project the plan's Claude session belongs to, and only the matching window opens it. Same for diffs — a change is reviewed in the window whose workspace contains the edited file. If you have a repo and one of its git worktrees open side by side, the more specific window wins.

Plans and diffs also open in the editor group where your other files are, rather than on top of the Claude terminal.

If Claude runs somewhere no window has open, nothing opens. Run Claude: Open Latest Plan from the Command Palette to pull it up, or set claudePlan.autoOpen to always to go back to opening everywhere.

Setup

1. Install the Claude Code CLI so claude is on your PATH.
2. Open a terminal in VS Code and run claude. (Or just press Cmd+Shift+L and let the extension open one.)
3. For diff review only: run Claude Diff: Install Claude Code Hooks from the Command Palette, or accept the prompt on first launch. This adds a PostToolUse hook to ~/.claude/settings.json so Claude tells the extension when it edits a file. Needs jq and curl on your PATH.

Sending context and viewing plans need no setup.

Finding the terminal. The extension looks for a terminal named claude, a shell integration reporting a running claude command, or a claude process under the terminal's shell — so a plain terminal you typed claude into works too. With several open, the focused one wins.

Commands

Keybindings

Multi-select only works via right-click — VS Code's API doesn't expose it to keybindings.

Settings

Claude Diff: Toggle Diff View writes claudeDiff.autoOpenDiff to your user settings, not the workspace — whether diffs pop open is a preference about how you work, not a property of one project.

How it works

Sending context — the extension writes the reference into the terminal's input buffer and moves focus there. Nothing is submitted until you press Enter.

Diff review — the hook posts the changed file's path to a small server on 127.0.0.1 inside each VS Code window. The window that owns the file stashes its git HEAD content in memory and adds it to the queue; that stashed copy is what the diff renders against, and what rejecting writes back to disk. Nothing opens unless you ask, or unless the diff view is switched on. View All Changes uses VS Code's multi-file diff editor, falling back to one tab per file on older versions.

Plans — a file watcher on ~/.claude/plans/*.md picks up new plans. To decide which window should open one, the extension reads the session's project directory out of Claude's own transcripts under ~/.claude/projects/ and compares it against the window's workspace folders.

Windows find each other through small JSON files in ~/.claude/claude-cli-companion/instances/, one per running window, cleaned up on exit.

Requirements

• Claude Code CLI on your PATH
• VS Code 1.85 or newer
• jq and curl — for diff review only
• git — diff review compares against git HEAD

Known limits

• Diff review compares against the last commit, not against what the file looked like a second before Claude touched it. Uncommitted work of your own shows up in the diff too.
• Remote/WSL/SSH windows watch the remote ~/.claude, so they only see sessions running on that host.
• The plan-owner lookup reads Claude's transcript files. If Claude ran from a directory no window has open, no window claims the plan — use Claude: Open Latest Plan.

License

MIT