Quick Inline Suggestion

VS Code extension that brings lightweight AI-powered ask and edit workflows into your editor — select code, hit Cmd+I, choose a mode, describe what you need, then review an answer or diff.

Supports Claude Code and OpenAI Codex CLI as backends.

Motivation

Recently, VS Code's built-in AI features have become increasingly bulky. I only wanted the simple inline suggestion workflow from VS Code Copilot: select code, ask for a change, review it, and apply it. So I built this plugin together with Claude Code to keep that experience lightweight and focused.

Features

• Edit mode — select code, describe the change, and review the modified code in a diff before applying
• Ask mode — ask a question about the selected code and get a new temporary document containing the context, your question, and the AI answer
• Inline edit shortcut — Cmd+I opens the quick workflow for choosing ask or edit mode
• Diff preview — review edit-mode changes side-by-side before applying
• WorkspaceEdit apply — accepted edit-mode changes are applied via VS Code's native edit API, keeping undo history intact
• Project-aware — the AI agent runs with the workspace as cwd, so it sees your full project context
• Instruction history — recent instructions are recalled and sorted by frequency or recency, with a clear button to reset history
• Auto-fallback — if the primary backend is unavailable, automatically falls back to the other
• Configurable backend — switch between Claude Code and Codex CLI in settings
• Multi-window — Cmd+I works independently in each editor window without locking

Requirements

• Claude Code (claude --version) or OpenAI Codex CLI (codex --version)
• VS Code ^1.85.0

Usage

1. Select code in the editor (or place cursor — empty selection sends the whole file)
2. Press Cmd+I (macOS) / Ctrl+I (Windows/Linux) — Cmd+Shift+I / Ctrl+Shift+I as fallback
3. Choose a mode:
   • Edit mode — describe the code change you want, then review and apply the diff
   • Ask mode — ask a question, then read the generated temporary document containing the selected context, your question, and the answer
4. Pick an instruction from history when available, or type a new one (e.g. "convert to async/await", "add error handling", "what does this function do?")

Keybinding conflicts

Official GitHub Copilot and some other extensions also bind Ctrl+I. If the shortcut doesn't work, use Ctrl+Shift+I or run Quick: Inline Edit from the command palette.

Screenshots

Mode	Instruction	Result
Edit
Ask

Limitations

• Not real inline/ghost-text completion — unlike Copilot-style Tab completion, this extension is a manual, instruction-driven workflow: you select code, explicitly trigger it (Cmd+I), and describe what you want. There's no automatic as-you-type suggestion.
• Latency — each request spawns a full CLI agent process (claude -p / codex exec), which is slower than a dedicated completion model. Expect seconds, not milliseconds.

Roadmap

• Tab completion — add true inline/ghost-text completion (accept with Tab) alongside the current instruction-driven workflow, for lightweight as-you-type suggestions.

Extension Settings

Installation

Search Quick Inline Suggestion or download from the VS Code Marketplace.

Reference

• Claude Code documentation
• OpenAI Codex CLI
• VS Code Extension API
• Zhihu article
• WeChat article