v1.125.0-alpha1

Clawdius 1.125.0-alpha1

A 💌 love letter to Visual Studio Code, Claude Code, and Clawd.

The first public alpha of Clawdius, a fork of Visual Studio Code built around Anthropic's official Claude Code plugin. This is a pre-release: the editor underneath is stable VS Code 1.125, but the Claude integration is new and still settling, so expect rough edges and please file what you find.

Clawdius keeps the editor you already know and adds native tooling for working with Claude Code. It tracks your token usage, lets you configure Claude Code without hand-editing JSON, estimates what fills your context window, and routes through whatever Claude Code provider you already use (a Claude subscription, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex, or a custom endpoint).

What's in this build

Claude Code, built in

On first launch, Clawdius installs Anthropic's official anthropic.claude-code plugin from Open VSX and signs in with your existing ~/.claude login. The pane opens in the sidebar, runs on the same engine as the CLI, and there is no second account and no reimplementation. VS Code's Copilot chat is retired so Claude is the default. github.copilot and github.copilot-chat are blocked from install, the Claude Code plugin is protected from accidental removal, and a status-bar safety net re-offers it if it ever goes missing.

The chat surface registers Claude Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku as selectable models (vendor clawdius), each backed by the local CLI. A per-model effort dropdown (Low through Max) maps to the CLI's effort flag and defaults to the value in your ~/.claude/settings.json.

Token and context awareness

A status-bar meter shows session and weekly token use, computed locally from your Claude Code transcripts, with a hover popup for account identity and capacity. The full Usage dashboard breaks the same numbers down by window and model, with a per-day chart, a contribution heatmap, 24-hour activity, and streaks. It refreshes only when you open it; the one network call it can make is a user-initiated capacity fetch from Anthropic using your existing OAuth token.

The Context Budget Inspector reports, for the file you are editing, what Claude actually loads: memory, rules, and skills, split into what applies every turn, what loads on demand, and what is skipped, each with an estimated token cost. It also shows the measured cached prefix from your last session. A status-bar pill flags the file's always-on total when it crosses a threshold you set, and a Lint Claude Context command writes Problems-panel markers for memory and rule files whose always-on cost runs high.

The Control Center

A native pane edits your ~/.claude and project .claude configuration so you never have to touch raw JSON, with a Global / Project / Project-local scope selector. Its tabs cover:

• Permissions: the default permission mode and the allow/ask/deny rule lists, with a builder for built-in tools, MCP tools, or raw rules.
• MCP: add, toggle, and inspect Model Context Protocol servers, with per-server approval and opt-in live tool discovery.
• Skills: enable or disable individual skills, plus the bundled-skills kill switch.
• Plugins: manage marketplaces and install plugins from the merged catalog.
• Hooks: a structured editor for lifecycle hooks and the disable-all switch.

Two more controls sit in the status bar: a permission-mode pill (Plan, Ask before edits, Edit automatically, Bypass) and an effort pill with a block-bar meter that also toggles Ultracode.

Privacy and trust posture

Telemetry, crash reporting, and update pings are off. The only outbound traffic is what you start: a Claude turn, an extension you install, or the on-demand usage fetch. Outbound link clicks are gated to github.com by default. The extension gallery is pinned to Open VSX, and anthropic and jeanp413 are trusted publishers so their extensions install without a prompt.

One trust default to be aware of: because Open VSX does not Microsoft-sign extensions, Clawdius defaults extensions.verifySignature to false. Forcing verification would block every install, including into remotes, with a "Signature verification was not executed" error. To turn signature checks back on, set extensions.verifySignature: true in settings.

Remote development (SSH and WSL)

Clawdius builds its own remote extension host (REH) server for Linux x64 and arm64 and serves it from this GitHub release. With the Open Remote - SSH or Open Remote - WSL extensions, a remote session pulls the matching server tarball straight from the release instead of a Microsoft CDN. The first-run install also brings in the jeanp413 remote extensions for your platform.

Themes and branding

Clawdius ships Dark, Light, High Contrast, and High Contrast Light themes tuned toward Claude's palette, and rebrands the application throughout (name, data folders, the clawdius:// URL protocol, and the issue/license/release links). There is no auto-update server yet, so "Check for Updates" opens the GitHub releases page, and a "Sponsor Clawdius" action links to GitHub Sponsors.

Platforms and signing

Every published artifact in this release is signed:

• Windows x64 and arm64: Azure Trusted Signing (user installer, system installer, and portable zip).
• macOS arm64: Apple Developer ID signing plus Apple notarization (.dmg and .zip).
• Linux x64 and arm64: GPG-signed SHA256SUMS (.deb, .rpm, and tarball). The .deb and .rpm also publish to Cloudsmith.
• REH server x64 and arm64: GPG-signed SHA256SUMS.
• Snap x64: built and attached here (see Known limitations).

Install

Pick your platform. Full per-platform steps and the exact asset names are in the README.

• Windows: run ClawdiusUserSetup-<arch>-<version>.exe (per-user, no admin) or the System installer for all users; a portable zip is also provided.
• macOS (Apple Silicon): open Clawdius-darwin-arm64-<version>.dmg and drag Clawdius into Applications.
• Linux (Debian / Ubuntu): sudo apt install ./clawdius_*_amd64.deb
• Linux (Fedora / RHEL / openSUSE): sudo dnf install ./clawdius-*.x86_64.rpm
• Snap: sudo snap install --classic --dangerous ./clawdius_*_amd64.snap

Known limitations

• This is alpha software. The editor is stable VS Code 1.125, but the Claude integration is new.
• Extension signature verification is off by default (see the trust note above).
• macOS builds are Apple Silicon only. There is no Intel build.
• Snap is x64 only and the Snap Store listing is not live yet, so the snap needs --dangerous to install. A native arm64 snap is deferred.
• There is no auto-update. Check the releases page for new builds.

Built on

Visual Studio Code 1.125 (microsoft/vscode). Clawdius is an independent fork and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft or Anthropic.

Repository: https://github.com/chapmanjw/clawdius
Full feature tour and screenshots: see the README.