RuntimeWire for VS Code, VSCodium & Antigravity

The latest AI news right in your status bar — perfect for the minutes you spend waiting on Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, or any agent to finish. A single status-bar entry rotates through fresh RuntimeWire headlines. No sidebar, no panel, no webview — just one glanceable line.

Runs identically in VS Code, VSCodium, and Google's Antigravity agentic editor — it uses only the standard, open-source VS Code status-bar API (createStatusBarItem), so the same build loads in every VS Code-compatible editor. Antigravity and VSCodium both install extensions from Open VSX, so the same package that ships there drops straight into all three editors.

This is the editor companion to the RuntimeWire CLI. It never patches Claude Code, Codex, or any other extension, and it never reads your code — it's a standalone status-bar entry.

What it does

Headline ticker — the latest AI headlines rotate through one status-bar entry. Click it to open the RuntimeWire menu and read any of them.
Read the whole headline — long titles are trimmed to fit the status bar; hover the entry and the tooltip shows the full, untruncated headline.
Pause anytime — mute the ticker with one click (status bar menu or the RuntimeWire: Pause/Resume ticker command) without uninstalling. It stays paused across restarts until you resume.
Filter topics — pick only the topics you care about (AI, startups, products, funding, …) via runtimewire.categories.
Make it pop — turn on runtimewire.prominent for a high-contrast background so the entry is easy to spot on a busy status bar.
Fail-soft — a network blip or empty feed never breaks the ticker.

Install

VS Code

Search RuntimeWire in the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X) and click Install, or install from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

VSCodium

VSCodium uses the Open VSX registry instead of the Microsoft Marketplace. Either:

From the Extensions view — search RuntimeWire (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X) and click Install (VSCodium points its Extensions view at Open VSX by default), or
From a .vsix file — download the latest runtimewire-*.vsix from the GitHub releases, then run Extensions: Install from VSIX… from the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and select the downloaded file.

Antigravity

Google's Antigravity agentic editor is a VS Code fork and, like VSCodium, installs extensions from Open VSX. The same build works there with no extra steps. Either:

From the Extensions view — search RuntimeWire (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X) and click Install (Antigravity points its Extensions view at Open VSX), or
From a .vsix file — download the latest runtimewire-*.vsix from the GitHub releases, then run Extensions: Install from VSIX… from the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and select the downloaded file.

The RuntimeWire entry appears in Antigravity's status bar exactly as it does in VS Code — it sits alongside any other status-bar items, never replacing them.

Getting started

Click the RuntimeWire entry in the status bar (bottom-right) to open the menu.
Keep coding — headlines refresh automatically every 3 minutes.

No account or sign-in is needed.

Status bar

State	Meaning
`$(pulse) <headline>`	A live RuntimeWire headline. Click to read it.
`$(debug-pause) RuntimeWire paused`	Ticker is paused. Click to resume.
`$(pulse) RuntimeWire`	Still loading, or no matching headlines found.

Click the entry to open the RuntimeWire menu — read any headline, pause/resume, or refresh.

Commands

Open the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P):

Command	Description
`RuntimeWire: Refresh`	Reload headlines now.
`RuntimeWire: Open current headline`	Open whatever the status bar is showing.
`RuntimeWire: Menu`	Open the full RuntimeWire menu.
`RuntimeWire: Pause/Resume ticker`	Mute (or un-mute) the rotation without uninstalling.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`runtimewire.apiBase`	`https://runtimewire.com`	RuntimeWire origin to read news from.
`runtimewire.proFeedUrl`	(empty)	RuntimeWire Pro members: paste your personal feed URL (from your RuntimeWire account) for realtime headlines. Without it the free feed runs a few hours behind.
`runtimewire.newsCount`	`5`	How many headlines to rotate in the ticker (4–6).
`runtimewire.refreshSeconds`	`180`	How often headlines refresh, in seconds.
`runtimewire.categories`	(all)	Only show these topics. Leave empty for all. Options: `ai`, `startups`, `products`, `funding`, `founder-moves`, `exits`, `venture`, `scoops`, `latest`.
`runtimewire.prominent`	`false`	Give the status-bar entry a high-contrast background so it's easier to spot.

Privacy

The extension talks only to your configured RuntimeWire origin to fetch the public RSS feed. It never reads your code, prompts, completions, or any chat content. No account information is ever sent.

License

MIT