labd

Your Dev Labs lab assistant, in the editor.

labd reads the screen you are actually looking at — the open file, what you have selected, and the errors the editor is reporting — and answers the way a good lab demonstrator would: what is actually happening, what to change, and the concept behind the fix. It is the same assistant that sits beside every page on learn.thedevlabs.io and runs in your terminal as labd, so it behaves the same in all three places — and what it remembers about you is shared between them.

What it does

• Explain this file — what it is for, how it is put together, and what a newcomer would trip over
• What's wrong here? — walks through the problems the editor is reporting: what each one means, what caused it, and how to fix it
• How would you improve this? — on the whole file, or just what you selected
• Ask anything — ⌘⌥L (Ctrl+Alt+L) from anywhere

When the answer depends on code labd has not been shown, it reads it: other files, directory listings, and a workspace search. All of that runs locally in the editor, never on a server. It also sees your branch and recent commits, your project's AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md, and the names of any skills it defines.

When labd changes your project

Sometimes the answer is a change rather than a paragraph, so labd can edit, create, move and delete files, and run commands — and it explains what it did and why, because that is the part you keep.

Edits land unsaved. A change to a file is applied in the editor and left dirty: you see it, the gutter shows what moved, and it only reaches disk when you save. A move or a delete is different — those happen on disk — which is why every answer that changed files carries a put back control that reverts the whole turn in one go, moves and deletes included. Anything you have edited since is left alone and listed, never overwritten.

Commands are the one thing put back cannot undo. A command runs in your own shell at the project root; whatever it did has already happened. What you get instead is the command shown in full before it runs, a timeout, and the complete output in the labd - commands output channel.

You decide how much it asks. The labd.mode setting is per workspace, so a choice made in a scratch project doesn't follow you into your coursework.

Switch from the bar under the composer, or in settings.

Some things are refused outright, whatever the mode and whatever labd is asked: writing to anything holding credentials (.env, keys, certificates — labd only ever sees which keys are set, never their values, so a write would destroy them), .git/, dependency and build directories, anything outside the folder you have open, and commands that need sudo, deploy, publish, git push, wipe a disk, or read a credentials file.

Getting set up

Run labd: Connect to The Dev Labs. It shows a short code; approve that code at learn.thedevlabs.io and the editor is connected to your account, answering on your monthly allowance. The token is stored in VS Code SecretStorage — never in settings.json, which syncs and turns up in screenshares.

Commands

Settings

Privacy

The chat panel holds no credentials and makes no network calls of its own — the extension host owns the token and every request, which is why the panel's content security policy forbids outbound connections entirely.

What is sent when you ask a question: the lines of the open file you can see on screen (not the whole file), your selection, the errors the editor is reporting, the names of your other open files, your branch and last few commits, your project's conventions file, and anything labd reads or runs while answering. Nothing is sent unless you ask something.

Made by The Dev Labs.