A Visual Studio Code extension that enables real-time, interactive test execution for Robot Framework.
Instead of waiting for an entire test suite to run, this tool pauses execution and allows you to send specific keywords, variables, or multi-line control blocks (like FOR and IF loops) directly from your editor to the active Robot Framework session.
Features
Interactive Execution: Highlight code or place your cursor on a line to run individual lines or blocks on the fly.
Smart Control Block Parsing: Natively handles FOR, WHILE, TRY, and IF statements (both block and inline) without crashing the live session.
Terminal Output: Routes all execution logs directly to the VS Code terminal.
Open VS Code and navigate to the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X).
Click the ... menu at the top right of the Extensions panel.
Select Install from VSIX... and choose the downloaded file.
How to Use
Open a robot framework .robot file
Locate and press the start start live session near the play button (play-circle icon)
Once pressed you will run the suite setup (if applicable) than it will wait for you to select code to run.
Running code. There are several ways to run your robot framework code with this tool.
Selecting code. Once selected you may run it by pressing the run selected button (list-selection icon) or press Control + Enter on your keyboard. To select the code to run here are the two main ways of doing it.
Place your cursor on a line to indicate that you want to run just that line.
Highlight rows to run all selected rows (if you select part of a row, the entire row will be selected)
Run bellow: Place your cursor on a line with robot framework code then press the Run bellow button (arrow-down icon). This will run all code bellow where your cursor is.
Run full test (run-all icon) Pressing the Run full test button will locate the current test case your cursor is in and run it from the beginning.
Other commands. While the steps are running, you will see a button to pause execution, resume execution, and end queue.
Pause: Will wait for whatever is running to stop, but will not run anything else until you press resume.
Resume: only visible while paused, but will resume the execution of your queue.
Exit queue: This will end your queue so you may edit or rerun segments of your code. If keywords are actively running, whatever keyword is actively running will need to finish before the queue is cleared.
Exiting Live test mode. Locate the Stop Live Session button (trash icon) this will simply quit the active test/queue in full.
QOL Features
Indicator for what is actively running
Indicators for last few keywords ran. (you may adjust the colour and length of the indicator)
If you edit the vscode settings for the robotcode plugin several settings will be honored.
output dir
variables
I have made attempts to have this solution attempt to adhere to the any settings set within the launch.json file.
I can not promise that it will work every time. This feature was added because I needed to have a second listener. Your milage may vary currently it only keeps the 'args' from the launch config.
Code will try to use whatever python environment you have selected.
Note this will not work if you do not have robotframework installed within that env. run the bellow command to install it.
python -m pip install robotframework
There are several small adjustments that can be made within the vscode settings for this extension.
License
This software is Dual-Licensed:
Open Source (GPLv3): You can use, modify, and distribute this software for free under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0. If you distribute modifications, your project must also be open-sourced under the GPLv3.
Commercial License: If you wish to use this software in a closed-source, proprietary, or commercial product without the requirements of the GPLv3, you must purchase a commercial license. Please contact me for pricing.
