[!NOTE] 100% local. No network client, no telemetry. Claude Code Manager reads
~/.claude/and renders in your sidebar under a strict CSP. No accounts, and no token ever leaves your machine. Even the live Quota card reads Claude Code's own statusline data from disk, never the network.
Install
VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Antigravity: open Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X), search Claude Code Manager, click Install.
VSCodium, Theia, Gitpod: install from Open VSX.
Command line: code --install-extension vishalguptax.claude-manager
Open the panel
Three ways, pick whichever is closest:
That's it. On VS Code 1.106+, the panel is also available from the secondary sidebar — drag its icon there if you'd rather it sit beside the official Claude Code chat panel than on the primary activity bar.
Why it exists
Claude Code is powerful, but the terminal isn't built for browsing. Finding a session you ran last week means scrollback hunting. Editing an MCP server means hand-patching JSON. Keeping track of every custom slash command, hook, and agent is its own job.
Claude Code Manager turns all of it into a sidebar you can click and search. Same Claude Code underneath, just one keystroke closer. It works whether you run the Claude Code CLI, the official VS Code extension, or both. Sessions from either show up in the same list, and Resume sends you back to wherever the session started (configurable).
Claude Code also keeps things most people never see: a versioned backup of every file it edits, every prompt you've ever typed, the auto-memory it writes to itself. Claude Code Manager reads all of it too — diff and restore a file Claude changed, search your entire prompt history, browse what it remembers about a project — the same way it already does for sessions and MCP servers.
It also folds the jobs you'd otherwise wire up with separate single-purpose tools into one install: a usage tracker (like ccusage), an account switcher (like claude-swap), and an MCP manager all live in the same sidebar.
So you can switch between Claude accounts in VS Code without a full logout and login, track Claude Code token usage alongside your 5-hour and 7-day subscription quota, manage MCP servers without editing JSON, resume past sessions by project and git branch, and organize your skills, slash commands, hooks, and agents. All of it one click away in your editor.
What's inside
More on each tab: Sessions · Usage & limits · Account switching · MCP · Skills · Commands · Hooks · Agents · Plugins · Checkpoints · Prompts · Memory · Settings
Keyboard shortcuts
Configuration
Open Settings (Ctrl+,) and search Claude Code Manager.
Full reference in docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.
FAQ
Does it send anything to the network?
No. The extension has no network client and no telemetry. It reads ~/.claude/ and renders in a VS Code webview whose CSP allows only its own scripts and blocks fetches and connections (connect-src 'none'). The Account tab's Quota card is local too: your 5-hour and 7-day numbers are computed by Claude Code and passed to its statusline, and an opt-in tap caches them to a file the extension reads from disk. The Quota card never calls Anthropic and never uses your OAuth token. The only time the extension handles a token is when you save an account profile (see below), and that copy stays on your machine. When you ask it to log in, install a plugin or authenticate an MCP server, it runs Claude Code's own CLI in a terminal, and the CLI does its own networking.
How does the View button know which terminal hosts which session?
Two passive signals, no instrumentation of Claude itself. (1) An opt-in SessionStart hook records each CLI boot's {sessionId, ppid} into ~/.claude/.claude-manager/active-sessions.json. Turn on Claude Manager › Sessions: Terminal Linking and the hook is added to your global ~/.claude/settings.json; turn it off and it is removed. The extension matches vscode.Terminal.processId against the recorded parent PID. (2) For VS Code terminals with shell integration, claude --resume <id> typed at any prompt is caught directly from the shell-execution event. cmd.exe (no shell integration) is covered by the hook path. Stale entries auto-prune after 1h or a dead PID.
Why does my terminal tab say 2.1.276 instead of the session name?
Because VS Code gives agent CLIs control of their own tab title, and Claude Code has not written one yet.
Since VS Code 1.106, terminal.integrated.tabs.allowAgentCliTitle defaults to true. When a terminal is running an agent CLI — claude is on VS Code's own list — the tab title comes from the CLI and the name an extension gave the terminal is ignored. So:
- While Claude Code is writing a title → the tab shows its session summary, exactly like a terminal where you typed
claudeyourself. - Before its first title, and after it exits → there is no title to show, and VS Code falls back to the process name. For Claude Code that is the folder its binary runs from, which is a version number:
2.1.276.
No extension can opt a single terminal out of this, so Claude Code Manager changes nothing unless you ask it to.
To keep session names on these tabs:
- Open Settings — Ctrl+, (Cmd+, on macOS).
- Search for Keep Session Names.
- Tick Claude Code Manager › Terminal: Keep Session Names.
That is it — tabs opened from the sidebar now keep their session name, and terminals you open yourself still follow Claude Code's own title. Untick it and your previous settings are restored.
Behind the scenes it writes two values to your user settings, which you can also set by hand instead:
// tabs named by an extension keep their name
"terminal.integrated.tabs.allowAgentCliTitle": false,
// tabs with no extension-set name still follow the CLI's title
"terminal.integrated.tabs.title": "${sequence}"
Both are needed. The first is what restores session names; without the second, terminals you open yourself would fall back to the process name instead of Claude Code's title. One side effect to know about: plain shells label their tabs from the title the shell writes, rather than zsh or bash.
Where are saved account profiles stored?
~/.claude/manager-accounts/<slug>/. Each slot holds a copy of ~/.claude.json and ~/.claude/.credentials.json plus a small profile.json with the label. These files include OAuth tokens (same plaintext format Claude CLI uses), so treat the folder as sensitive. Remove a profile and its token copy is deleted immediately.
Does it work with Cursor / Windsurf / Kiro / Antigravity / VSCodium? Yes. It's a standard VS Code extension, published to both the VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX. Search Claude Code Manager in your editor's Extensions view: Cursor, Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf), Kiro, VSCodium and Gitpod install from Open VSX. Per-editor notes: claudecodemanager.vishalg.in/editors.
Do I need Claude Code installed?
Yes. Install Claude Code first. Either the CLI, the official VS Code extension, or both works. Claude Code Manager reads from the shared ~/.claude/ directory, so sessions from either surface show up together.
Does it modify my Claude config?
Only when you explicitly act: enable or disable an MCP server, edit a permission, restore from a backup, rename or delete a session, or switch on one of the two opt-in taps — the statusline tap behind the Quota card, and the SessionStart hook behind the View button (claudeManager.sessions.terminalLinking). Both write to ~/.claude/settings.json only while they are enabled, and remove their own entry when you turn them off. Nothing is written to that file just because the sidebar was opened.
Where does my data live?
In ~/.claude/, the same place Claude Code itself uses. The extension never copies, uploads, or duplicates your sessions.
Compatibility
Works on every VS Code-based editor: VS Code • Cursor • Windsurf • Antigravity • VSCodium • Theia • Codespaces • Gitpod
Requires VS Code 1.90+ and Claude Code installed. (On editors older than ~18 months, stay on the 1.10.x line.)
Contributing
Bug reports and PRs are welcome. See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md for local setup, build, and architecture. Browse open issues, open a new one, or check the changelog.
Architecture (v2): the webview is built with Preact + @preact/signals, feature-sliced under src/features/*/webview/, bundled by esbuild as a tiny shell that lazy-loads one code-split chunk per feature tab. Every message between the extension host and the webview flows through a single shared protocol validated at runtime with valibot, so malformed frames are rejected rather than acted on. The webview runs under a strict CSP (default-src 'none', nonce-only scripts) and makes no network calls. Lint + format is Biome; 4,400+ unit tests gate every change. Upgrading from v1? See the v1→v2 migration guide. There's nothing you need to do.
Support
If Claude Code Manager saves you time, consider sponsoring the project. Sponsorship keeps development active and the extension free for everyone.
Disclaimer
Claude Code Manager is an independent, community-built extension. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic. Claude and Claude Code are trademarks of Anthropic, PBC, used here only to describe the files this extension reads on your machine.
