I've been using VS Code for years. I actually switched to it from IntelliJ because the latter got so bloated.

Now for the last 6 months We've gotten almost daily updates of the editor. Almost all dealing with "Agents" view.

I'm a Claude Code user. And Ollama cloud & local models. And Codex sometimes. But I have no plans to deal with Copilot and especially not to sign up for premium models through copilot.

Is Agents view actually useful and/or superior to using the Claude or Codex (subscription) extensions in a normal pane? Every time I try it, I am reminded that it seems utterly useless for Claude without Copilot.

I feel like I'm dragging around this IDE as a weight, when it is not really targeted at me anymore.

Recently I tried putting my VS Code window into OBS and it looked awful: tabs, sidebars, minimap, tiny text. I looked for an extension that renders the code itself on the overlay instead of a window capture and couldn't find one, so I built it.

Stream Code mirrors the editor you're typing in to a browser source:

• 12 themes (Catppuccin, Kick, Twitch, a CRT terminal, glass, neon, macOS window, and more)
• 3D tilt / depth / float, and an edge fade so the code dissolves into your game
• Zoom on mouse: point at a line and the overlay zooms there, as a lens or a camera
• Everything's a VS Code setting, plus a gallery page to preview and click through looks
• .env, secrets and keys are never sent, and there's a pause button in the status bar
• Runs locally, nothing leaves your PC

Free and open source (GPL-3.0), and I'd love for people to jump in: PRs are very welcome, whether it's a new theme, a bug fix or a feature idea.

• Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=heyjeay.stream-code
• Site: https://heyjeay.github.io/streamcode
• Source (PRs welcome!): https://github.com/heyjeay/streamcode

Feedback welcome, especially theme ideas!

I created PinPoint because after migrating from Cursor back to VS Code, I really missed the click-to-add UI elements functionality.

This is pretty much all that this extension does. You turn it on, and it uses VS Code's built-in browser debugger to let you click on an element and copy its references, so the CSS selector, DOM path, HTML, dimensions, computed styles, etc., along with a screenshot of the element itself. All bundled into a Markdown file for your coding agent to read. It also automatically copies the file reference to your clipboard so you can just paste it into your agent's chat.

It saves these assets locally in your project, but the files are automatically gitignored and self-cleaning after 24 hours.

Tbh this thing wouldn't even be needed if VS Code supported third-party, non-Copilot coding agents with its native UI element selector, but until it does, PinPoint can act as a drop-in alternative for pretty much any coding agent. It doesn't clutter your UI either, only appearing when you open the built-in browser, next to the other browser controls.

One thing, don't forget to turn it off after using it to copy stuff into your chat, as until then your in-browser content is unresponsive to normal clicks and is only in the PinPoint selection mode 😉

It's free, open source and veeery lightweight 😄.

GitHub: https://github.com/TinySuiteHQ/Pinpoint

Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=marcellm01.tinysuite-pinpoint