[FEATURE] Allow the new Claude VS Code extension to configure the claude executable path

[justin39]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

The new Claude VS Code extension seems to always spawn claude from the bundled claude-code package:

node /home/user/.vscode-server/extensions/anthropic.claude-code-2.0.0/resources/claude-code/cli.js --output-format stream-json --verbose --input-format stream-json --append-system-prompt [...]

This may be because the extension is unable to find a native installation or a global NPM install of claude-code - instead, we use a wrapper script on PATH. This wrapper script performs some convenient setup, like setting up some infrastructure and the environment variables required to run Claude with our third-party model provider. The bundled claude-code doesn't perform this bootstrapping and won't work.

Proposed Solution

I would like to be able to configure the extension to use a claude executable by path.

Alternative Solutions

It's possible to rig up the environment variables via claude-code.environmentVariables settings in VS Code, but this is manual and doesn't fully cover the setup required.

Priority

High - Significant impact on productivity

Feature Category

Developer tools/SDK

Use Case Example

No response

Additional Context

No response

[justin39]

Appears to be fixed by the new claude-code.claudeProcessWrapper setting in VS Code; thanks!

[MatevzFa]

I'm trying to accomplish exactly that, but I'm running into some issues.

I have set the following in .vscode/settings.json:

"claudeCode.claudeProcessWrapper": "${workspaceFolder}/claudew.bat",

Where claudew.bat is a batch script that sets up the environment and then launches Claude. Calling this script in the terminal works fine. However, launching integrated Claude Code gives me this error:

ReferenceError: Claude Code native binary not found at ${workspaceFolder}/claudew.bat. Please ensure Claude Code is installed via native installer or specify a valid path with options.pathToClaudeCodeExecutable.

@justin39 Could you help me with how you leveraged this setting to achieve what you wanted? Based on your issue description it seems to me we have a very similar use-case.

[justin39]

@MatevzFa That sounds like our use-case, yep! I don't think we're doing anything special to make it work on our end - just sets up the environment as well before invoking node <path to claude-code-cli.js>; maybe a platform difference between Linux and Windows?

[github-actions]

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