CLI Agent Hub

A CLI command center for AI coding agents — Claude, Codex, Cursor, Gemini — inside VS Code.

Agent Hub is a VS Code extension that turns the editor into a launch surface for AI CLI agents. One retro home tab, keyboard shortcuts, layout presets, real session titles, and a sidebar that lists every conversation you've ever had across every tool.

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 \  `\    | | | |( (_) |(  ___/| ( ) || |_    | | | || (_) || |_) )    /' /'      /' /'
  `\__)   (_) (_)`\__  |`\____)(_) (_)`\__)   (_) (_)`\___/'(_,__/'   (_/'       (_/'
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                  \___/'

What it does

Hero tab

A Welcome-style home screen you open with the Activity Bar rocket, status bar button, or ⌘⌥A.

• Start row — one-click launchers for every installed CLI (only installed ones appear).
• Prompt box — type a prompt, pick an agent, ⌘↵ runs claude 'your prompt' (or the equivalent for the selected CLI). Shows your current workspace path underneath.
• Recent sessions — last 10 conversations across all CLIs, with real titles parsed from the transcript (first user message, not just the folder name).
• Layouts — 4 editor-area presets with imagery and big shortcut badges.

Multi-agent support

Each CLI has its own adapter with capability flags — no assumption that every tool supports every action.

Session titles are parsed from the first user message. Working directories are extracted from each transcript's cwd field so paths with dots in them (e.g. /Users/jane.doe/…) resolve correctly.

Explorer sidebar section

An Agent Sessions group joins Explorer / Outline / Timeline in the built-in sidebar. Each CLI is a collapsible node; expand to see its sessions; click to resume in a new terminal. Auto-refreshes when you peek.

Layout presets

• Single — one terminal alongside the editor
• Two Columns — side-by-side terminals
• Grid — 2×2 editor group grid
• Terminal Focus — maximized panel for long-running agent sessions

Keyboard shortcuts

All commands are also reachable from the Command Palette under the Agent Hub category.

Settings

Override any of these per-project in .vscode/settings.json.

Install

From the VS Code Marketplace

code --install-extension aloncarmel.cli-agent-hub

Or search "CLI Agent Hub" in the Extensions panel → Install.

From VSIX

One-liner:

curl -LO https://github.com/aloncarmel/agenthub/raw/main/cli-agent-hub-0.0.13.vsix
code --install-extension cli-agent-hub-0.0.13.vsix

Or manually: download cli-agent-hub-0.0.13.vsix → in VS Code: Extensions → ⋯ menu → Install from VSIX… → pick the file.

Requirements

Agent Hub is a launcher — install whichever CLIs you want side-by-side:

• Claude Code — npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
• Codex CLI — npm i -g @openai/codex
• Cursor CLI — bundled with Cursor
• Gemini CLI

The extension auto-detects which are installed and only shows launchers for the ones it finds on PATH.

Build locally

git clone https://github.com/aloncarmel/agenthub.git
cd agenthub
npm install
npm run compile

# Run in a dev Extension Host
#  → open the folder in VS Code and press F5

# Package as VSIX
npx @vscode/vsce package --allow-missing-repository

Architecture

src/
  extension.ts           activation, command wiring, shared refresh loop
  adapters/              one per CLI — detect, discover sessions, build commands
  sessions/              merges adapter output, sorts by recency, caches
  layout/                applies editor-group + terminal presets
  terminals/             stock VS Code terminal launcher
  tree/                  Explorer "Agent Sessions" tree data provider
  webview/               the retro home tab
  util/                  output channel, shell quoting
  types/                 shared interfaces

Everything the extension needs from the filesystem is read with byte-capped fs.read — no streaming parsers that can stall on multi-MB transcripts with huge system-prompt lines.

Roadmap

• Agent Message Queue integration — detect AMQ; surface inboxes, send cross-agent messages from the Hub, toast on arrivals.
• Headless agent runs — kick off a Claude/Codex session from the Hub without opening a terminal; stream results into a Hub panel.
• MCP bridge — let running CLIs call back into VS Code: open_file, notify, ask, apply_layout, attach_file.
• Workspace-specific layouts — remember the layout used per project.
• Session search, pinning, tagging.
• Agent-to-agent handoff UI — kanban-ish view of active agent threads.

Known limitations

• Activity-bar icons always open a sidebar; Agent Hub's launcher view auto-dismisses after opening the home tab in the editor area (VS Code quirk, not ours).
• File drag-and-drop into terminals is limited by VS Code's own terminal implementation — dropped files paste as paths, not bytes. See microsoft/vscode#152990.
• Session titles are heuristic; malformed or encrypted transcripts fall back to folder names.

Contributing

PRs welcome. Please:

1. Target main.
2. Keep adapters pure — no VS Code API inside src/adapters/*.
3. Bump version in package.json when you ship a user-visible change.

License

MIT © Alon Carmel