The Problem:

The Claude Sonnet 3.5 web interface is great as a code generator and assistant for prototyping and working with a single file.

At a certain scale jumping back and forth between your development environment and the web interface can take time and lead to copy and paste errors. In addition, LLMs can only provide real help if they can see the whole context of what you're working on.

At this point the user needs AI integration right in the development environment. I found that the available Claude AI integration extensions on the marketplace to be interesting but not reliable enough for professional coding.

My Approach:

I decided to 'solve my own problem' by targeting my specific pain point: "Claude at your fingertips". I wanted bulletproof Right Click (Context Menu) Support for Claude. This required focusing on the nuts and bolts: Rock-solid API integration with cancellation support, predictable window management, and comprehensive test coverage.

Results:

Preparing this groundwork allowed me to confidently push the context window of Claude AI in VS Code. I tested it by concatenating an entire codebase into a 6000 line file, and although it took about 30 seconds, Claude AI easily managed it.

Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=conscious-robot.claude-vscode-assistant
Github: https://github.com/Talamantez/claude-vscode
Video Demo: https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/video/33954964?key=6cfc609183bb09f48e218063d4140a4e