Quality-of-life tools for Claude Code inside VS Code, bundled into a single extension.
Four features in one place:
- RTL — Right-to-left support in the Claude Code chat (Active / Always / Auto modes), for Hebrew, Arabic, Persian.
- Sounds — Audio notification when Claude finishes a message or asks for your input. Pick any sound from a shared library for each event; reused sounds are flagged so you can keep the two distinct.
- Chats — A sidebar list of your past Claude Code conversations. Rename, archive, restore, search, export to Markdown, view inline — with file links in the viewer that open the file right in VS Code.
- Colors — Give each VS Code window its own color (title, activity and status bars), so five open projects stop looking identical. Pick from the Colors panel or a custom hex.
Install
Until the marketplace listing is ready, install the packaged .vsix directly:
code --install-extension benefits-toolkit-<version>.vsix
After installing, look for the activity bar icon — it opens the Claude Chats sidebar.
Configuration
All settings live under benefit.*. Each feature has an enabled toggle so you can disable individual features without uninstalling the extension.
Status
This is a fresh release built by Ben Akiva. Tested primarily on Windows.
Inspired by
This toolkit was inspired by the experience of using these community extensions in parallel:
- Claude Code RTL by Yechiel Brand
- Claude Chats by Alex Zanfir
- claude-sound-hooks — Claude Code hooks for audio notifications
No code from those extensions is included here — this is a clean-room rewrite.
Sound credits
The bundled notification/finish sounds are royalty-free effects from Pixabay (Pixabay Content License — free for commercial use, no attribution required) and Mixkit (Mixkit License — free for commercial projects, no attribution required). Credits are kept here as a courtesy to the creators (e.g. universfield, dragon-studio, soundshelfstudio, phoenix_connection_brazil).
License
MIT © Ben Akiva