Chat Sidebar for OpenCode

English · 繁體中文

A sidebar chat extension for VS Code that drives your locally installed opencode through its official headless server — a Codex/Cursor-grade GUI chat panel without leaving your editor.

• Multi-session chat with real-time streaming responses
• Permission approvals and question cards inline in the conversation
• Slash-command palette, agent picker, and model picker
• @-mention file attachments, image paste, editor-selection attach
• Todos and session diffs dock with native vscode.diff previews
• Bilingual UI (English / 繁體中文) that follows VS Code's display language, with an in-app override (opencodeChatSidebar.language) that hot-swaps every open panel without a reload

The extension talks to opencode's own server (HTTP + SSE) through the official @opencode-ai/sdk, all traffic proxied by the extension host — no browser security workarounds, no provider keys stored by the extension.

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Features

• Sessions — list, create, rename, delete, search, share/unshare, and fork sessions. Session state syncs automatically over the server event stream. The panel is chat-first: the conversation owns the sidebar by default, and the header history button slides the session list in as a left drawer (Esc, backdrop click, or picking/creating a session closes it). The sidebar also stacks a native Sessions view below Chat that shows the session list on its own and can be collapsed by the editor.
• Streaming chat — markdown rendering with syntax highlighting, collapsed reasoning ("Thinking") parts, and generic tool-call cards that render any tool name data-driven (built-in or custom).
• Composer — Enter to send, Shift+Enter for newline, per-session drafts, Stop/abort while busy, text + image + @-mention file attachments, and a warn-before-send flag on sensitive paths (.env, *.pem, id_rsa, …).
• Slash commands & pickers — type / for the command palette (opencode builtins and custom commands), pick your agent and model per session.
• Approvals — permission cards (allow once / always allow / reject) and question cards appear inline; nothing is auto-answered.
• Todos & diffs dock — the session's todo list and per-message file diffs, opened in VS Code's native diff editor.
• Message ops — revert (with confirmation), unrevert, regenerate, summarize/compact, run a shell command, export transcripts as markdown.
• Token usage strip — per-session totals of assistant input/output/reasoning tokens shown in the chat toolbar (hidden until the server reports usage).
• IDE integrations — editor context menu Attach selection / Attach current file, click file chips to open files, status-bar item with server controls, and an Open opencode TUI escape hatch.
• MCP panel — shows the MCP servers configured natively in opencode.
• Capability detection — probes the connected server and hides features it does not support (older opencode builds), with a single informational toast. Works on plain opencode and opencode + oh-my-opencode alike.

oh-my-opencode (OMO) notes

OMO is fully optional. When installed:

• OMO custom agents, commands, and tools just work — they surface through the standard server API and are rendered generically (no special-casing).
• The MCP panel lists only natively configured MCP servers. OMO plugins may inject additional MCP servers that do not appear in this list — an in-panel note reminds you the inventory may be under-reported.

Without OMO everything behaves identically, minus the note.

Installation

Install Chat Sidebar for OpenCode from the Visual Studio Marketplace — or search "Chat Sidebar for OpenCode" in the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X), then reload when prompted. The panel icon appears in the Activity Bar.

To install a packaged .vsix instead (e.g. an unreleased build):

1. Get chat-sidebar-for-opencode-x.y.z.vsix from Releases, or build it yourself (see below).
2. In the Extensions view, open the ... menu → Install from VSIX... and pick the file. Or from a terminal: code --install-extension chat-sidebar-for-opencode-x.y.z.vsix (use your editor's bundled CLI).
3. Reload the window when prompted — the panel icon appears in the Activity Bar.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/SenCha930511/chat-sidebar-for-opencode.git
cd chat-sidebar-for-opencode
npm install
npm run build && npm run build:webview
npx vsce package   # produces chat-sidebar-for-opencode-<version>.vsix

Development loop: run npm run watch (extension host) plus npm run watch:webview (webview), then press F5 to launch the Extension Development Host.

Requirements

• opencode installed and on your PATH (or configure opencodeChatSidebar.binaryPath). Install per the opencode docs, e.g. curl -fsSL https://opencode.ai/install | bash, brew install anomalyco/tap/opencode, or npm install -g opencode-ai.
• At least one LLM provider configured in opencode (opencode owns all provider auth; the extension never sees your API keys).
• oh-my-opencode is optional (see notes above).
• VS Code 1.99.0 or newer.

Settings

All settings live under the opencodeChatSidebar.* namespace — editable in VS Code's Settings UI or in the extension's own settings page (gear icon in the chat view header). Secrets (server password) are stored only in VS Code SecretStorage.

Setting	Type	Default	Description
opencodeChatSidebar.serverUrl	string	""	Full URL of an already-running opencode server. When set (and healthy), the extension attaches to it instead of spawning one.
opencodeChatSidebar.port	number	4096	Port for the managed opencode serve instance.
opencodeChatSidebar.hostname	string	"127.0.0.1"	Hostname for the managed server.
opencodeChatSidebar.binaryPath	string	"opencode"	Path/name of the opencode binary used to spawn and open the TUI.
opencodeChatSidebar.serverArgs	string[]	[]	Extra arguments passed to opencode serve.
opencodeChatSidebar.autoStartServer	boolean	true	Automatically spawn/attach the server on activation.
opencodeChatSidebar.minimumServerVersion	string	"0.0.0"	Warn when the connected server reports a version below this floor (warn-only; never blocks).
opencodeChatSidebar.debugLogs	boolean	false	Verbose logging to the Chat Sidebar for OpenCode output channel (credentials are always redacted).
opencodeChatSidebar.chatFontFamily	string	""	Override the chat font family (empty = VS Code default).
opencodeChatSidebar.chatFontSize	number	0	Override the chat font size in px (0 = VS Code default).
opencodeChatSidebar.language	enum	"auto"	Panel interface language: auto follows VS Code's display language; en / zh-TW pin a locale and apply instantly to every open panel.

TUI escape hatch

The status-bar menu and the Open opencode TUI command open an integrated terminal running opencode attach <server-url> against the panel's server (falling back to a plain opencode session on older CLIs) — the full terminal UI is always one click away.

Known limitations

• Attaching to your own TUI's random port is unsupported by design. The panel spawns or attaches to one known server endpoint per workspace; it does not hunt for ad-hoc TUI ports. Sessions are shared though: sessions created from any surface on the same server appear everywhere.
• The MCP panel lists only natively configured MCP servers (see OMO notes).
• The Chinese localization ships one table (Traditional). All zh-* display variants fall back to it.
• Question cards appear only when the connected server exposes the question-reply route (detected at runtime).

Screenshots

The chat panel with a streaming session, collapsed reasoning ("Thinking") and tool cards, plus the todos & file-changes dock:

Permission and question cards appear inline in the conversation — nothing is auto-answered:

Permission approval	Question card

Todos & file changes dock, with per-message diffs opened in VS Code's native diff editor:

The extension's own settings page (gear icon in the chat view header):

Full IDE view

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at SenCha930511/chat-sidebar-for-opencode. Before sending a PR, keep the quality gates green: npm run build, node scripts/check-i18n.mjs, node scripts/check-coverage.mjs, and npm run test:unit.

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License

MIT © 2026 SenCha930511