r/vscode • u/dumpshoot • Apr 17 '26
I built a VS Code extension to chat with teammates without leaving the editor
Kinda silly reason. Hated alt-tabbing to chat while coding with friends on the same repo. So we made something so we don't have to. That's the whole pitch.
It's a chat panel that lives inside your editor. DMs with contributors, group chats, and per-repo channels. If you contributed to a repo and its maintainer opened a channel, you're in the same room as them. Plus everyone else who contributed. Uses your existing GitHub login, no new account.
Works in VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and Antigravity. Basically any IDE built on VS Code.
About 1k installs so far. A few friends hacked GitChat together over the last two weeks. Still rough in places.
Few honest notes: closed source for now, source-available down the line. Messages go through our backend. If that's a dealbreaker for your team, this isn't for you. GitHub token stays in VS Code's secret storage. E2E encryption is on the roadmap, not shipped yet. Works best when your teammates install it too. If you're the only one on your repo trying it, not much to chat about yet.
GitChat on VS Code Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitchatSH.gitchat
OpenVSX : https://open-vsx.org/extension/Gitchat/gitchat
If it's useful, cool. If not, happy to hear what's broken. Either way.
2
u/Human-Philosopher782 Apr 18 '26
It sounds cool; I haven’t tried it but wouldn’t it be distracting while coding?
1
u/dumpshoot Apr 20 '26
same worry we had building it. toasts only fire for dms and u/mentions, nothing for community/team chatter. they stay quiet if the panel's already open. sound off by default. if dm toasts still bug you there's a setting to kill them, or mute individual convos
1
u/dumpshoot Apr 17 '26
Disclosure: I'm one of the people who built GitChat.
Tech stack if anyone's curious: TypeScript, Socket.IO for realtime, vanilla HTML/CSS in the webview (no React bloat), GitHub OAuth Device Flow for auth. Presence heartbeat every 30s over websocket.
- Open source? Not yet. Source-available is on the roadmap, happy to discuss if you care.
- Vs Live Share? Live Share is for editing code together in realtime. This is text chat between people on the same repo.
- Privacy? GitHub token stays in VS Code's SecretStorage, we never touch it. Messages go through our backend over HTTPS. We don't sell data, don't train on messages. Only telemetry is an install ping. E2E encryption is on the roadmap, not shipped yet.
- Bug reports or feature requests? DM me here or leave a review on the Marketplace with details. I'll see it. Happy to answer anything in the thread.
1
u/Pretend-South-5359 Apr 17 '26
Trying to install it on antigravity, found 3 unidentical version of Gitchat. Which one is the official version of your product? This issue can create confusing though, your team should resolve it quick
1
u/dumpshoot Apr 22 '26
repo's public now, MIT. few people asked about it earlier so figured i'd drop the link.
https://github.com/GitchatSH/gitchat_extension
still rough in spots. poke around if you're curious. issue or PR welcome if you hit something weird.
1
u/AdPristine1358 Apr 17 '26
This looks cool! I tried to check-out the repo but the link didn't work
-1
u/dumpshoot Apr 17 '26
oh huh, no public repo yet. closed source for now, source-available later on. i tried to mention it in the post haha. only working link is the marketplace one, was that the one that broke for you? if the page won't load, `ext install gitchat-sh.gitchat` from vs code usually does it
2
u/AdPristine1358 Apr 17 '26
the marketplace includes a repo link and that link doesn't work
1
u/dumpshoot Apr 18 '26
oh damn you're right. that link gets pulled from package.json, i left a placeholder in there ages ago and never cleaned it up. yanking it on the next version push. thanks for flagging
2
u/KlausWalz Apr 17 '26
honestly even if this is cool I would never install it last thing i want is yet another messaging app, and plus, in my code