Recent Copilot Chat ID

See and copy the most recently saved Copilot Chat session UUID without reading chat content.

Install from Marketplace • Features • Commands • Privacy • 日本語

Important limitation

This extension shows a recently saved session ID. It does not claim to identify the current or active chat session. VS Code does not expose that identity through the stable Extension API.

Features

Status bar: Recent Chat: <short UUID>, with a screen reader label on every state
Tooltip shows how many session IDs are saved in the window
Copy the full recent UUID
List saved UUIDs and select one to copy, searchable by save time
Manually refresh the filename scan
Refresh automatically when session files change
Log diagnostics to the Recent Copilot Chat ID Output Channel
Japanese UI when VS Code display language is ja

Installation

Install from the VS Code Marketplace, or run:

ext install yamapan.ag-show-session-id

For a local build:

Run npm install in this repository.
Run npm test to verify the extension locally.
Run npm run package to create the VSIX.
In VS Code, run Extensions: Install from VSIX... from the Command Palette.
Select the generated artifacts/vsix/ag-show-session-id-<version>.vsix and reload VS Code when prompted.

Enable

Filename scanning is disabled by default. The extension offers to turn it on once per profile on first activation. You can also run any command and choose Enable in the prompt, or set agShowSessionId.enabled in User Settings.

The extension then reads only .json and .jsonl filenames from the current window's local chatSessions storage directory. It reads file modification times for ordering. The opt-in setting is machine-scoped and is not synchronized to other devices.

Commands

Command	Purpose
`Recent Copilot Chat ID: Refresh`	Scan saved session filenames again
`Recent Copilot Chat ID: Copy Recent ID`	Copy the most recently saved UUID
`Recent Copilot Chat ID: Show Saved IDs`	List saved UUIDs and copy the selected one
`Recent Copilot Chat ID: Show Output`	Open the diagnostic Output Channel

All commands appear in the Command Palette under the Recent Copilot Chat ID category.

Status bar states

State	Meaning	Select to
`<short UUID>`	One session was saved most recently	Copy the full ID
`ambiguous`	Several sessions share the latest save time	Choose an ID
`none`	No saved session filenames were found	Review saved IDs
`unavailable`	Local session storage cannot be read in this window	Open the log

Privacy

No telemetry or network access
No chat JSON/JSONL content reads
No debug log or state.vscdb reads
No session file writes
No prompt, response, title, reference, or code collection
Diagnostic logs include only shortened ID prefixes, never full session IDs

Compatibility

Minimum declared VS Code version: 1.125.0
Verified development environment: VS Code 1.131.0 on Windows 11
Desktop local windows only
Empty windows (no folder open) read the separate global chat session storage
Virtual workspaces, VS Code for the Web, and some Remote/WSL layouts can report unavailable
This PoC depends on an undocumented internal storage location and degrades without modifying data when that layout is unavailable

The source workspace includes the API and storage analysis at research/20260805-copilot-chat-session-id-extension.md.

Development

npm install
npm test
npm run package
npm run verify:install
npm run verify:release

The VSIX is written to artifacts/vsix/. verify:install installs that VSIX into an isolated .vscode-test profile and confirms the packaged extension ID and version without changing your normal VS Code installation. verify:release runs the complete local gate: dependency audit, unit and Extension Host tests, package verification, and isolated installation.