RTL for AI Chats

Your AI assistant already speaks Persian, Arabic, Urdu, and Hebrew. Now its chat panel finally reads that way too.

None of these editors natively render RTL script in their AI chat panels — a Persian question shows up left-aligned, punctuation scrambled, numbers flipped. RTL for AI Chats patches the chat itself so it just reads correctly, everywhere you use it, without you doing anything after setup.

- Persian/Arabic replies render left-aligned, punctuation and numbers scrambled
+ Every RTL message snaps right-aligned, reading in the correct direction

- Code snippets inside an RTL answer get mirrored along with the text
+ Code blocks, diffs, and terminals always stay left-to-right, untouched

- An editor or extension update silently undoes any manual fix you made
+ The patch watches for updates and re-applies itself automatically

Features

• Detects direction per message, not per panel. Each chat element is checked for RTL script on its own — mixed Persian/English messages, inline numbers, and punctuation all render correctly instead of the whole panel just being blanket-mirrored.

• Two detection modes. ratio (smart — flips once enough of a message's letters are RTL, tunable by threshold) or first-strong (matches the browser's native dir="auto" behavior).

• Code never flips. Code blocks, inline code, diffs, and terminal panes are explicitly excluded, so a Persian question followed by a JS snippet doesn't turn the snippet backwards.

• Numbers, filenames, and URLs stay put mid-sentence. A Persian message that mentions index.js, a percentage, or a link no longer scrambles that part — it cooperates with the browser's own bidi algorithm instead of forcing one direction on every character.

• Clarifying-question widgets included. Claude Code's AskUserQuestion / permission-request cards and Codex's multiple-choice option lists render RTL too, not just the main message stream.

• Runs across 7 editors out of the box: VS Code, VS Code Insiders, Cursor, Windsurf, Windsurf Next, Devin Desktop, and Google Antigravity — it scans ~/.vscode, ~/.cursor, ~/.windsurf, etc. and patches whichever ones are actually installed on your machine.

• Patches 4 AI chat surfaces:

  Target	How
  Claude Code	webview/index.js in anthropic.claude-code-*
  ChatGPT / Codex	hashed bundle in openai.chatgpt-*/webview/assets/
  Gemini Code Assist	webview/app_bundle.js in google.geminicodeassist-*
  Copilot Chat / Antigravity's built-in agent	the editor's own workbench.html

• Self-healing. Watches every installed editor's extensions/ folder live — the moment an update overwrites the patch, it's silently re-applied and you just get a one-click "Reload Window" prompt.

• Fully configurable, from a settings panel in the Activity Bar or the standard Settings UI — font, size, line-height, detection mode and threshold, per-message override toggle, and more. See Settings.

• Safe by design. Every file is backed up to <file>.rtl-backup before the first patch, and one command restores everything, everywhere.

• No extension required, if you'd rather not install one. Every part of what the extension does is also a standalone script you can run by hand.

Install

From the VS Code Marketplace (VS Code, VS Code Insiders): search "RTL for AI Chats" in Extensions, or open the listing directly and click Install.

From Open VSX (Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium, and other Open VSX-backed editors): search "RTL for AI Chats" in Extensions, or open the listing directly and click Install.

One-shot script — builds the .vsix once and installs it into every editor found on your machine:

./install.sh

Manual, per editor:

npm install -g @vscode/vsce
vsce package

Then in each editor: Extensions → … menu → Install from VSIX... → select the generated rtl-ai-chats-*.vsix, then run Developer: Reload Window.

No-install alternative — run the patch script directly, no extension needed:

node fix-rtl.js            # apply
node fix-rtl.js --dry-run  # preview only, no changes
node fix-rtl.js --restore  # undo everything

Commands

Open the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P) and run:

• RTL: Re-inject into All AI Agents — force a re-patch right now, across every installed editor and chat surface.
• RTL: Show Injection Status — see what's patched vs. broken, per editor, with a one-click "Fix Now" if anything's out of date.
• RTL: Restore Original (Undo All Patches) — revert every patched file from its backup. Run this before uninstalling.
• RTL: Turn On / Off — toggle everything without opening Settings.
• RTL: Show / Hide Sidebar Panel — show or hide the Activity Bar icon.
• RTL: Open Settings — jump straight to this extension's settings.

Settings

Click the RTL icon in the Activity Bar for a settings panel, or open Settings → Extensions → RTL for AI Chats. Changing any setting that affects the patch re-applies it automatically across every installed editor.

Staying patched after updates

The extension activates on startup and also watches every installed editor's extensions/ folder live — if an editor or AI-agent extension update overwrites the patch (which happens on auto-update, since it overwrites the webview bundle), it's detected and re-applied automatically. You just get a prompt to reload the window; no manual steps needed.

Uninstalling

Run RTL: Restore Original (Undo All Patches) (or node fix-rtl.js --restore) first to revert every patched file to its pre-extension state, then uninstall the extension normally from each editor.

Credits

The bundled Vazirmatn and Sahel fonts are by Saber Rastikerdar, licensed under the SIL Open Font License.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.