NotebookAwesome

Cell numbering, naming, navigation, and custom run order — for Jupyter notebooks.

🔢 Numbered headers 🏷️ Nameable cells ▶️ Custom run order
🧭 Cell navigator 🎨 Color tags 📊 Execution status

Big notebooks turn into a scroll-hunt fast. NotebookAwesome gives every cell a number and an optional name right in its header, a sidebar navigator to jump anywhere in one click, color tags to group your work, and custom run sequences so you can execute just the cells you want, in the order you want.

Works in VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and every VS Code-compatible editor. Free and open source.

✨ Features

🔢 Numbered headers

A header above each cell shows its number, updated automatically as you add, remove, or reorder cells. No more "wait, which cell was that?"

An auto-numbered cell header reading 'Cell 13'

🏷️ Nameable cells

Give any cell a real name — 9: Train Test Split, 4: Load Data — shown in the header and throughout the navigator. Double-click a row to rename inline. Names are saved inside the .ipynb, so they travel with your notebook.

A renamed cell header reading '9: Train Test Split'

▶️ Custom run order

Run only the cells you want, in the order you list them. Define named sequences like 1, 2-5, 8 and run exactly those cells, in the order you list them, with one click. Perfect for a quick smoke test, re-running just your model pipeline, or skipping the slow setup cells.

Ranges supported (2-5) and any custom order (8, 3, 1).
Each sequence is bound to its cells (not brittle line numbers) — reorder your notebook and the sequence still runs the right cells.
Live progress spinner while running; a green box when it succeeds, red if a cell fails (it stops there).
Stored in the .ipynb, so your sequences travel with the file.

Custom run sequences — named lists of cells to run in a chosen order

🧭 Cell navigator

The sidebar lists every cell with its number and name. Click any row to jump straight to it. Search by number or name, filter to just Code or Markdown, and collapse sections under Markdown headings for a clean outline of huge notebooks.

NotebookAwesome Cell Navigator — grouped cells with names, numbers, color tags, and run status

🎨 Color tags

Tag cells with colors from a customizable palette, then filter the navigator to a single color to focus on just those cells — great for marking TODOs, review spots, or pipeline stages.

Color-tagging cells and filtering the navigator by color

📊 Execution status

Each code cell shows a run indicator in the navigator: a left-to-right green sweep while running, solid green on success, red on failure — so you can watch a Run All march down your notebook.

Per-cell execution status bars in the navigator — running, success, and failed

⌨️ Jump anywhere — `Ctrl+Alt+G`

A quick-pick of every cell, filterable by number, name, or first line of code. Keyboard-navigable; press Enter to jump.

💾 Everything travels with the file

Names, colors, and run sequences are stored in the notebook's own metadata (notebook.metadata.notebookawesome) — no sidecar files, no cloud sync. Copy the .ipynb to another machine with the extension and it's all there.

🔌 Works everywhere VS Code does

Built on the standard extension API only — no Microsoft-proprietary calls — so it runs identically in VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium, and other forks.

🚀 Install

VS Code / Cursor / Windsurf: open Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X), search NotebookAwesome, click Install. Or quick-open (Ctrl+P) and run ext install royayon.notebookawesome.

Open VSX (Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium): open-vsx.org/extension/royayon/notebookawesome

Manual: grab the latest .vsix from Releases and run code --install-extension notebookawesome-*.vsix.

🕹️ Quick start

Do this	How
Open the navigator	Click the notebook icon in the Activity Bar
Jump to a cell	Click its row in the navigator
Rename a cell	Double-click its row, or `Ctrl+Shift+P` → NotebookAwesome: Rename Cell
Color a cell	Click the ● dot on its row, pick a color
Filter by color	Click ● Color in the toolbar, pick a swatch
Show only Code / Markdown	Click Code or MD in the toolbar
Build a run sequence	Click ▶ Runs → + Add run sequence, type `1, 2-5, 8`, name it, hit ▶
Jump-to-cell palette	`Ctrl+Alt+G`

⚙️ Configuration

Customize the color palette in settings.json:

"notebookawesome.colorPalette": [
  { "name": "Red",    "color": "#e05252" },
  { "name": "Green",  "color": "#4caf6e" },
  { "name": "Blue",   "color": "#4a90d9" },
  { "name": "Yellow", "color": "#d4b83c" }
]

💾 How your data is stored

Names, colors, and run sequences live in the .ipynb's own metadata — the same file you already version-control:

"metadata": {
  "notebookawesome": {
    "cells":     { "<content-hash>": { "name": "Feature Engineering", "color": "Green" } },
    "sequences": [ { "name": "Smoke test", "cells": ["<hash>", "<hash>", "<hash>"] } ]
  }
}

Keys are content hashes of each cell, so renaming or reordering cells never loses their metadata.

🤝 Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome!

Fork and branch.
npm install, then npm run watch to compile on change.
Press F5 to launch the Extension Development Host and open any .ipynb.
Open a PR.

NotebookAwesome

Ayon Roy

NotebookAwesome