Mend for VS Code

Mend is a local-first workbench for people who work with coding agents. It runs your own agent (Claude Code, Codex, or any command) in a recorded git worktree on a Mend server, and shows the change it made with the evidence behind it.

This extension lists your Mend projects and sessions in VS Code and opens a session inside its workspace over Remote-SSH. The editor's files are the session's worktree, and the integrated terminal runs in the workspace: its image, its environment, and the session's harness home. A claude or codex you start in that terminal is observed by Mend. The session shows running, the workspace stays up, and the conversation is recorded and can be resumed from any device.

Requirements

• A Mend server, version 0.36 or newer, with a workspace SSH gateway. Install one with npm install --global @sealant/mend and mend server setup; see Install.
• VS Code 1.100 or newer.
• Microsoft's Remote - SSH extension, to open a session's workspace. Without it, opening a session offers to install it, or copies the code --remote … command that opens the same folder.

Sign in

If you ran mend login on this machine, there is nothing to set up: the extension reads the CLI's connection from ~/.config/mend/cli.json. With nothing configured, it uses http://localhost:3105.

Otherwise run Mend: Connect to server and enter the server URL as this machine reaches it, then pick how to sign in:

• Sign in with the browser: the browser opens <server>/authorize. Approve there when it shows the same code as VS Code. The editor gets its own device token, listed under Settings → Devices as VS Code on <machine>.
• Paste a device token minted in the web app under Settings → Devices.
• No token, for a local server that does not require one.

The token is kept in VS Code's secret storage. For a plain http:// URL on another machine the extension says so before you sign in: the token would cross that network unencrypted. Mend: Sign out revokes a browser sign-in's token and forgets it.

Open a session over Remote-SSH

The Mend icon in the Activity Bar opens Projects and sessions: sessions waiting for you under Needs you, then each project with its sessions and their status. Click a session to open it.

The first open asks Set up workspace SSH?. Setup registers this machine's SSH public key with Mend and adds one Host block for this server at the start of ~/.ssh/config. It keeps your own configuration. It uses a key from your SSH agent or creates one under ~/.config/mend/ssh, and never asks for a passphrase. Run Mend: Set up workspace SSH, or mend ssh setup, to redo it.

In a per-person workspace, the 0.36 default, the Remote-SSH login is the workspace's launcher, as their own Linux user, on their home and logins. Only the launcher can open that workspace over Remote-SSH.

The extension never opens the worktree's path on the Mend host instead. A terminal there would run outside the workspace, where Mend does not see it. When the server has no workspace SSH gateway, the open stops with a message.

Start a session

Click + in the view, or run Mend: New Session…:

• Workbench: a fresh worktree held open by a shell. VS Code opens in it, and you run claude or codex yourself in the terminal.
• Claude agent or Codex agent: Mend starts the agent on your prompt, and the workspace opens beside it.
• Agent with options…: harness, model, thinking level, permissions and base branch.

Mend: New session in this worktree… starts another session on the same files and branch, with a new conversation.

Take over a running session

Opening a session whose agent runs elsewhere (a mend codex in a terminal, a session picked up on the phone) asks whether to Open alongside it or Take over in the editor. A takeover stops the running agent, keeps the workspace up with a shell, opens it, and runs the harness's own resume in a new terminal: codex resume <id> or claude --resume <id>. The conversation continues in the editor, and Mend records it as the same conversation.

Other commands

A link of the form vscode://sealant-sh.mend/open?session=<session-id> opens that session.

Settings

• mend.serverUrl: the Mend server URL. Empty uses the CLI's configuration, then http://localhost:3105.
• mend.workspaceSshHost: another SSH hostname for the server, for networks where the URL's hostname does not reach the SSH port.

More

• Full guide: VS Code extension
• A server on another machine, step by step: Mac mini and VS Code
• Issues: github.com/sealant-sh/Mend/issues
• Source: apps/vscode, Apache-2.0

To build the extension from source, run pnpm install, then pnpm --filter mend build and pnpm --filter mend package in a checkout, and install the .vsix with Extensions: Install from VSIX….