NotebookAwesome

The navigation and organization layer your Jupyter notebooks are missing.

Give every cell a name, a color, and an instant jump target — all stored inside the .ipynb file so everything travels with your notebook when you share it or move it to another machine.

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

Features

Cell Navigator panel

A sidebar panel that lists every cell in your notebook. Click any row to jump to it instantly. Filter by Code or Markdown, filter by color, search by name or number — the panel keeps up as you work.

Renameable cell headers

Give any cell a memorable name. The name appears above the cell code and in the navigator. Double-click a row in the panel to rename it inline, or use the Command Palette.

Cell color tags

Tag cells with colors from a customizable palette. A colored dot appears next to each cell in the navigator. Filter the panel down to a single color to focus on just those cells.

Execution state bar

A thin bar below each code cell row in the navigator shows its execution state at a glance:

Jump to cell — Ctrl+Alt+G

A quick-pick menu that filters all cells by number, name, or first line of code. Keyboard-navigable; press Enter to jump.

Grouping by Markdown headings

Markdown cells act as collapsible section headers. Code cells between two headings are grouped under the first, keeping the navigator compact for large notebooks.

Portable metadata

Names and colors are stored in notebook.metadata.notebookawesome inside the .ipynb file. They travel with the notebook when you copy it, share it, or open it on a different machine — no extra files required.

Installation

VS Code Marketplace

Search NotebookAwesome in the Extensions panel (Ctrl+Shift+X) and click Install.

Open VSX (Cursor, Windsurf, and other forks)

Search NotebookAwesome in your editor's Extensions panel, or visit open-vsx.org.

Manual install

1. Download the latest .vsix from Releases
2. code --install-extension notebookawesome-*.vsix

Usage

Rename a cell

• Double-click any row label in the Cell Navigator panel, or
• Ctrl+Shift+P → NotebookAwesome: Rename Cell

Set a cell color

• Click the ● dot on the right side of any row in the navigator
• Pick a color from the popup; click the dot again to clear it

Navigate

• Open the Cell Navigator from the Activity Bar (notebook icon)
• Click any row to jump to that cell

Filter and search

• Type in the search box to filter by cell number or name
• Click Code or MD to show only that type
• Click the Color button to open the palette strip and filter by color

Jump anywhere — Ctrl+Alt+G

Opens a quick-pick with all cells. Type a number, name, or first line of code to narrow down, then press Enter.

How metadata is stored

Names and colors live at notebook.metadata.notebookawesome.cells in the .ipynb JSON — the same file you already version-control and share. No sidecar files, no cloud sync, no editor-specific storage.

"metadata": {
  "kernelspec": { "..." },
  "notebookawesome": {
    "cells": {
      "<content-hash>": { "name": "Feature Engineering", "color": "#4caf6e" }
    }
  }
}

Keys are SHA-1 hashes of each cell's content, so renaming or reordering cells doesn't lose their metadata.

Configuration

Add to your settings.json to customize the color palette:

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

Contributing

1. Fork the repo and create a branch
2. npm install then npm run watch to compile on change
3. Press F5 in VS Code to launch the Extension Development Host
4. Open any .ipynb file and test your changes
5. Open a PR — contributions welcome

License

GPL-3.0-or-later © royayon