Nodecode for VS Code

Watch and steer live Nodecode sessions without leaving VS Code: streaming replies, queued prompts, checkpoints, forks and background processes, surfaced in the sidebar and a session panel. The extension talks to the nodecode CLI's RPC protocol — the same session data you see in the terminal TUI, projected into the editor.

Features

• Session picker — browse, rename and delete conversations in a scrollable popover without leaving the chat. Switch between recent sessions and their explicit parent/child lineage; selecting a session keeps the picker and search open. Click the conversation title to rename it; the workspace path is in its tooltip. The chat is the sole view in the Nodecode container; history stays in the popover.
• Chat sidebar and editor panel — a Nodecode-branded conversation with the official axolotl, warm orange accents, theme-aware surfaces, compact session actions and model/effort controls. Replies use a small inline avatar; clipboard icons appear on their own message, thought or code area on hover or keyboard focus. Streaming replies and tool results retain their reading position during updates. Long conversations open at the latest messages and reveal earlier history as you scroll up, keeping your reading position. Expanded thinking grows with its content, capped at eight lines or one-third of the chat viewport. It follows new thoughts until you scroll away or select text; return to its bottom to follow again.
• Threads — open direct child threads or history forks from the conversation strip, see which are running, and return to the parent. Nodecode fresh threads and inherited-history forks remain distinct. Completed assistant messages offer a Fork action that opens a new editor conversation through that recorded turn; the original stays open. Bookmark controls mark existing recorded checkpoints without creating a new file snapshot; draft forks show their native save state.
• Rich conversation — the safe Markdown renderer from Prime Agent brings aligned tables, task lists, all heading levels, fenced code with language labels, copy controls and clickable source-file links. Native tool states, image results, workspace diffs and metadata stay inspectable. Attach, paste or drop PNG, JPEG, GIF and WebP images; restore image previews from session history.
• Recorded changes — compact Modified files rows and tool-result previews share red/green unified diffs with old/new line numbers. Expand a file to inspect its recorded patch; the separate Open file button opens its current workspace file without toggling the preview. Reading positions, selections and disclosures survive updates, and expanded diffs and scroll positions survive webview reloads. The strip shows the latest recorded change per file, not a net session diff or a comparison against Git HEAD; binary, unavailable, incomplete and explicitly truncated patches are labeled instead of inventing missing content.
• File references — type @ to find a workspace file, then use arrow keys and Tab or Enter, or click, to attach it. Suggestions follow the caret inside the composer. Selected @files stay inline at the caret as editable references. Removing the reference removes its context; Nodecode receives the current contents of selected references when you send. Files selected through + remain separate attachment chips.
• Editor context — add a selected range or the active file to the draft with the editor context menu; nothing is submitted until you send.
• Reliable composition — draft text and image/file selections survive webview reloads. A pending send resumes acknowledgement tracking without submitting it again; only the accepted draft is cleared, preserving edits made while it was sending. If the extension host loses the acknowledgement, the draft stays available with an outcome-unknown warning so you can check history before retrying. While work is active, Enter and Send steer that response by default; the separate Queue button explicitly waits for the current turn to finish. Steering takes effect after the current response and its tool batch finish, not by interrupting an in-flight tool. Pending chips distinguish “Steer pending” from “Queued”; Withdraw removes either before delivery. Stop work or jump back to the newest message after reading history.
• Turn controls — cancel the active turn or undo the last turn (checkpoint restore) without switching to the terminal.
• Model controls — search the inline model menu, star favorites, inspect reported context limits, and choose only reasoning levels supplied by Nodecode. Sticky Main, Aux, Decider and Backup tabs control their separate native settings; backup tests run only when clicked.
• Attachments — large text becomes a retained text-file attachment; add multiple files/images, preview them, and retry failed staging without losing the draft. The + dropdown immediately lists Nodecode files; type to filter without changing the draft, or use its footer to choose files in this computer’s native file dialog. Native browsing requires a verified local runtime; a separate host is reported as unavailable rather than showing the wrong filesystem.
• Native commands and runtime — slash commands use Nodecode's catalog and dialogs; missing installs offer the official installer and Retry, and the menu can restart the native service. The Nodecode CLI version links to its matching GitHub release when available, with verified release or binary-update dates in the tooltip.
• Steering — pick the model or effort budget for a session, and write nodecode.md into any workspace to guide the agent there.
• Diagnostics — an output channel shows activation and CLI protocol traffic when nodecode.diagnostics is enabled.

Reopening history and usage

Open controllers are reused when switching conversations. After a completed sync, the extension saves a private local projection in VS Code’s extension storage. Reopening shows that saved history immediately, including recorded file changes, agent relationships and usage, while validating a durable event and catching up from the saved cursor. The runtime remains authoritative: changed branches, incompatible or corrupt caches, and failed validation trigger a replacement replay. Partial replays never replace the last complete checkpoint. Sending and turn controls wait for synchronization; cached process output is last observed, not proof a process is still running.

The footer shows current context separately from cumulative tokens, abbreviated in K/M. Hover for exact input, output, cache-read and cache-write counts. Cumulative usage and recorded cost cover this session’s currently visible branch, not child agents or work discarded by undo; cost may exclude unpriced rounds. Earlier messages remain available by scrolling upward—the cache is not a history truncation.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.96 or newer.
• The nodecode CLI installed and reachable on PATH (or set nodecode.cliPath).
• Untrusted and virtual workspaces are not supported: the extension launches the local CLI and reads workspace files.

Install

From the VS Code Marketplace: search Nodecode (publisher sirouk), or run:

code --install-extension sirouk.nodecode-vscode

From a release asset: download the latest .vsix from the Releases page, then Extensions → … → Install from VSIX….

Getting started

1. Click the Nodecode icon in the activity bar and choose New Conversation to start directly in the editor. Existing terminal sessions also appear automatically.
2. Use Browse sessions in the chat toolbar to choose an existing conversation from the popover. Search titles and conversation content directly in the popover.
3. Click a session to open it in Chat. Session actions → Open in editor opens a full editor tab. New Session in Terminal starts the CLI instead. The last selected conversation is restored in that workspace.

Configuration

Commands

Development

git clone https://github.com/sirouk/nodecode-vscode
cd nodecode-vscode
npm install
npm run compile

Press F5 for an Extension Development Host. npm test compiles the extension and runs the Node regression suite plus the IPC + HTTP parity probe (CLI sections skip when nodecode is not on PATH); npm run icon writes media/icon.png from the embedded official mark — it must stay committed, CI fails if it drifts; npm run typecheck typechecks without emitting; npm run package builds the .vsix.

For the optional Chromium interaction checks, use an existing Playwright installation with its Chromium browser installed:

export PLAYWRIGHT_PATH=/path/to/installed/playwright
node test/browser-smoke.mjs
node test/browser-regressions.mjs
node test/browser-diffs.mjs

These cover rendering, narrow layouts, navigation, draft persistence, delayed acknowledgements, active-response steering versus explicit queuing, failure recovery, and recorded-diff coloring, copying, navigation and reading-state retention. No browser dependency is added to the extension.

Releasing

This repo follows the same release discipline as prime-agent-vscode:

1. ./release.sh --dry-run runs every gate and prints the plan without editing anything.
2. ./release.sh --version vX.Y.Z — synchronizes the version in package.json and package-lock.json, promotes [Unreleased] changelog entries, runs the full battery (compile, tests/parity, icon freshness), packages the vsix and asserts exactly the intended file set ships, then commits, tags, pushes, and creates the GitHub release with the vsix asset.
3. The Marketplace publish belongs to CI: pushing the version tag triggers .github/workflows/publish.yml. It installs locked dependencies with npm ci, verifies tests and icon freshness for that exact tagged commit, then packages and publishes only if verification succeeds. The script monitors that tag-push run, not a GitHub release event.
4. Once, set the secret: an Azure DevOps PAT with Marketplace → Manage scope, named VSCE_PAT in the GitHub CI environment (Settings → Environments → CI → Environment secrets). The tag-only publish job selects environment: CI, matching Prime’s setup; repository Actions secrets are also supported. release.sh checks environment and repository secret names without reading their values, and distinguishes missing secrets from scopes it cannot inspect. A rerun uses the original workflow revision, so a workflow repair must be included in a new release tag.
5. Optional local publishing: .env with VSCE_PAT plus VSCE_PUBLISH=1 (see release.sh --help). This does not disable tag-triggered CI publishing, so the two publishers can race and one can fail with a duplicate-version error; leave it unset for the normal CI-owned release. .env is excluded from git and from every vsix by .vscodeignore and the package allowlist — never commit it.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.