Groundhog for VS Code
Run hosted HTTPS tunnels beside your app. The extension runs in the workspace, including WSL, dev containers and Codespaces.
Use VS Code 1.101 or later. Open Groundhog in the activity bar, sign in through the Accounts menu, and choose your workspace. Right-click a tunnel to start hosting, copy its URL, inspect traffic or edit visitor access. CLI credentials stay in the shared CLI store.
When no local target is saved, Start hosting asks for your app's URL, prefilled from groundhog.json or launchSettings.json. Later starts and restarts reuse the saved local target.
Install the .NET 10 SDK and run dotnet tool update --global Groundhog.Cli --prerelease. This preview requires CLI 1.3.0-preview.1 or later; install it only after the matching CLI package is published. Open Groundhog in the activity bar to sign in. A custom executable path can be set with groundhog.cliPath.
Platform-specific release packages include a self-contained CLI and work without a .NET SDK. A compatible global CLI is used when it is newer; an explicit groundhog.cliPath always takes precedence. Bundled backends use compressed single-file publishing. Trimming is currently unsupported because the CLI and RPC dependencies use reflection; no trim warnings are suppressed.
Debugging and requests
Put groundhog.json in the workspace folder with a tunnel and local target. Groundhog connects before debugging starts, reuses an existing local agent (including Aspire), and injects GROUNDHOG_PUBLIC_URL for .NET and Node debug configurations. Hosting continues after debugging by default; enable groundhog.stopHostingAfterDebugging to stop agents started by the debugger. groundhog.debugConfigurations limits which configurations start hosting.
The request panel streams up to 1,000 rows with method, status and path filters. Pause freezes the display while capture continues. Choose a row to inspect captured data, edit a replay, copy curl or export an untitled .http document. Replay sends to loopback only, requires confirmation, and is unavailable for truncated captures. Signed webhook timestamps may need updating. Body capture requires owner or tunnel-creator permission and applies to future requests.
Use the panel's QR code to open the public URL on a phone. C# calls to WithGroundhogTunnel("my-tunnel") gain Open and Requests CodeLens actions. Disconnect notifications are enabled by default; groundhog.notifyOn5xx enables the first server-error notice after five quiet minutes. Notifications are limited to one per tunnel per minute.
Groundhog: Run diagnostics adds actionable results to Problems on groundhog.json. Edit visitor access controls default/path rules, IP ranges and visitor API keys; a new key can be copied once or saved to .NET user secrets. The extension also contributes a read-only Groundhog MCP server to VS Code chat in trusted workspaces. Disable it with groundhog.enableMcp.
Groundhog's public service and help center are at groundhog.unifinity.com.
Development
Run npm ci, then npm run build. Open this folder in VS Code and press F5. Run npm run lint, npm run typecheck, npm test, npm run test:smoke and npm run package before shipping. Linux smoke tests need xvfb-run -a npm run test:smoke. The smoke test downloads and shares one VS Code installation; unit tests do not launch VS Code.
npm run package creates groundhog.vsix. Publishing requires owner-controlled Marketplace and Open VSX accounts; building a VSIX does not publish it.
In an Extension Development Host, enable groundhog.useMockBackend for scripted example workspace data and live demo requests. This setting has no effect in an installed extension. The production client uses the CLI's JSON-RPC stdio backend, negotiates protocol version 1, cancels timed-out requests and reconnects with bounded backoff. Failed mutations are never retried automatically.
