VS Code Extension Automation

Automate VS Code Insiders with the Copilot Chat extension using agent-browser. VS Code is built on Electron/Chromium and exposes a Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) port that agent-browser can connect to, enabling the same snapshot-interact workflow used for web pages.

Prerequisites

• agent-browser must be installed. It's available in the project's devDependencies — run npm install. Use npx agent-browser if it's not on your PATH, or install globally with npm install -g agent-browser.
• code-insiders is required. This extension uses 58 proposed VS Code APIs and targets vscode ^1.110.0-20260223. VS Code Stable will not activate it — you must use VS Code Insiders.
• The extension must be compiled first. Use npm run compile for a one-shot build, or npm run watch for iterative development.
• CSS selectors are internal implementation details. Selectors like .interactive-input-part, .monaco-editor, and .view-line are VS Code internals that may change across versions. If automation breaks after a VS Code update, re-snapshot and check for selector changes.

Core Workflow

1. Build the extension
2. Launch VS Code Insiders with the extension and remote debugging enabled
3. Connect agent-browser to the CDP port
4. Snapshot to discover interactive elements
5. Interact using element refs
6. Re-snapshot after navigation or state changes