Terminal Reader for Claude

Stop copy-pasting terminal output into Claude. Let it read your terminal directly.

What it does

When Claude Code is running in your VSCode window, this extension lets it see exactly what's in your terminals and Problems panel — live. No more "what was that error?", no more pasting screenshots, no more Ctrl+A Ctrl+C.

Ask Claude:

• "Why did the build fail?" — it reads the terminal output, finds the error, and looks at the surrounding context.
• "What's still failing in my test run?" — it filters for failures and reads only those.
• "Wait until the deploy finishes and then check for warnings." — it polls in the background, then reports back.
• "Cancel that command." — it sends Ctrl-C.

The extension does the heavy lifting (server-side regex, line-numbered ranges, raw stream access) so Claude spends tokens on solving your problem, not parsing your screen.

Install

Prerequisite: the Claude Code extension. This extension is useless without it.

The easy way — install from the VSCode Marketplace:

1. Open the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X), search for Terminal Reader for Claude, click Install.
2. Done. The extension auto-registers itself with Claude Code, both extensions notice each other, and the status bar lights up green once a Claude session connects.

The manual way — install from a .vsix:

1. Download the latest .vsix from GitHub Releases. Nothing to compile.
2. In VSCode: Ctrl+Shift+P → Extensions: Install from VSIX… → pick the file.
3. Same as above — auto-registration handles the rest.

If the status bar icon stays yellow or red, click it — the tooltip and one-click fixes will tell you what's missing.

How Claude knows what it can do

You don't have to teach Claude anything. The extension exposes itself as an MCP server, and on first connection Claude calls tools/list and reads the tool descriptions and input schemas the extension ships with. From that point on Claude knows the eight tools below, what each one returns, and how to combine them — for the lifetime of every future Claude session in that VSCode window.

What Claude can do

Eight tools, all under the mcp__vscode-reader__* namespace:

Tool	What it does
terminal_list	Lists your terminals with their busy state and last command/exit code
terminal_read	Reads output. Supports server-side regex, line ranges, context, three formats
terminal_read_all	Same, but across every terminal at once
terminal_state	Just the metadata — busy/idle, last command, exit code, line counts
terminal_interrupt	Sends Ctrl-C to abort a runaway command
terminal_clear	Clears the captured buffer (your visible terminal isn't touched)
problems_list	Diagnostics from VSCode's Problems panel
problems_summary	Counts and top files

Highlights

Server-side regex. Claude doesn't pull the whole buffer and grep it — it asks the extension to filter, with optional context lines, and gets back exactly what it needs.

Stable line numbers. Every line gets a 1-based number that never changes, never repeats, never resets. Claude can grep for "error", spot it on line 88, and read lines 80–95 for context in a follow-up call.

Three output formats. text (compact, default), json (programmatic), or raw (the unmodified stream including ANSI colours and shell-integration markers — for when Claude needs to see exit codes, command boundaries, or coloured output). Grep, range, tail, and context filters all work on every format — including raw, where the bytes inside kept lines are preserved verbatim.

Polling without re-reading. terminal_state returns just metadata. Claude can wait for a long command to finish without re-fetching megabytes of output every tick.

Multi-window safe. Each VSCode window has its own private channel. Multiple windows side by side don't bleed into each other.

Zero copy-paste. That's the whole point.

Settings

Setting	Default	Effect
vscodeTerminalReader.bufferLines	10000	Max lines per terminal kept in memory
vscodeTerminalReader.stripAnsi	true	Strip ANSI/colour codes from text/json reads

Status bar

The status bar icon shows three states: green (Claude connected), yellow (registered but waiting for Claude to connect), red (not registered). Click it any time for diagnostic detail and one-click recovery actions.

Limitations

Terminal capture only works when shell integration is on. PowerShell 7.4+, bash, zsh, fish, and git-bash on Windows all auto-enable it. Output produced before the extension activated isn't captured — a freshly-reloaded window has empty buffers until commands run.

Contributing / issues

github.com/davwright/vscode-terminal-reader — issues, source, releases.

License

MIT.