An infinite canvas for running terminals and coding agents side by side. Spawn shell terminals as cards, run Claude Code / Codex / Gemini CLI in each, and arrange them spatially.
Quick start
- Install from the Marketplace.
- Run “Jam Desk: Open Canvas” (command palette or editor tab bar button).
- Hit the Claude or Codex toolbar button to open a terminal with the agent already running (or add a plain terminal and launch it yourself).
- Add more terminals, notes, and file cards — group them into regions, and tile them with the 2-split / 3-split / 2×2 layout buttons.
Terminals & coding agents
- Real terminals — each card is a full PTY shell (node-pty + xterm.js), spawned in your workspace folder. TUI agents work.
- Many agents, one surface — no more digging through terminal tabs; zoom out to watch all agents, zoom in to drive one.
- Live agent status — auto-detects Claude Code / Codex per terminal and shows the session title plus an animated idle / working / waiting badge on the card title and minimap.
- Shift+Enter just works — converted to
\+ Enter, so it inserts a newline in Claude Code instead of submitting. - Terminal scroll — the wheel scrolls output over a terminal card, zooms the canvas elsewhere.
- Theme-aware — follows your VS Code terminal colors and font.
Organize around your agents
- Notes — free-text cards for prompts, plans, and TODOs.
- File cards — point at workspace files; open them in the editor.
- Regions — labeled, colored groups that move and resize as a unit.
- Canvas mechanics — smooth zoom, inertia panning, snapping with alignment guides, marquee selection, minimap, auto-layout, undo/redo.
- Persistence — auto-saved per workspace; JSON export / import.
Shortcuts
| Action | Shortcut / control |
|---|---|
| Add terminal / note / file card | toolbar, or right-click |
| Launch Claude Code / Codex | toolbar (one-click terminal + agent) |
| Zoom | mouse wheel, ⌘/Ctrl + scroll |
| Pan | trackpad, right/middle-drag, or hold Space |
| Fit to screen | Shift+1 |
| Group into region | toolbar ▢ |
| Auto-layout | toolbar ▦ |
| Tile 2-split / 3-split / 2×2 | toolbar (tiles selection, else all cards) |
| Undo / redo | ⌘/Ctrl+Z / ⌘/Ctrl+Shift+Z |
Development
npm install
npm run watch # rebuild on change
Press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host, then run
“Jam Desk: Open Canvas”.
Credits
Canvas mechanics inspired by the Cate IDE. Licensed under MIT.