Display non-running app hosts in extension

[JamesNK]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe the problem.

If no app host is running then you don't see anything in the aspire pane:

Describe the solution you'd like

There is an aspire ls for listing app hosts on disk. How about using that command to populate a list of app hosts in disk.

Maybe have a UI to right click of them and start them?

Additional context

No response

[joperezr]

🤖 Aspire triage pass — 2026-05-25 03:36 UTC

Area: area-extension
Kind: feature-request
Repro: n/a (feature request) — see lines 7–13 of issue body for the UX gap described
Affected version(s): not specified (latest: 13.3.x)
Severity: S4 — UX polish; extension pane shows nothing when no app host is running

Urgency: ⚪ backlog — no milestone
Reason: feature request / UX enhancement; no functional regression and a vNext-worthy proposal but not a ship blocker. Could reasonably be pulled into 13.4 if owner has bandwidth.

Suggested owner(s): @adamint (score ~44)
Evidence:

• adamint merged 14 PRs labeled area-extension in the last 90 days (e.g. Add Simple Browser option for dashboard launch #15896, Use PR-specific version for dogfood VS Code extension #15892, VS Code extension: Improve gutter, code lens, and tree view resource state indicators #15688, make non-http panel links non-clickable #15514, Add AppHost CodeLens and gutter decoration support #15397, Aspire panel improvements, rename building apphost -> connecting to apphost in extension run, add off setting to enableAspireDashboardAutoLaunch  #15172, Print apphost exit message in debug console and add TypeScript Azure Functions playground sample #15155, Add Getting Started walkthrough to VS Code extension #14872)
• adamint closed many area-extension issues as completed in last 180 days (e.g. Aspire extension error: Missing valid DCP prefix in detached mode #17127, Azure Functions project fails to start when IDE cannot handle "azure-functions" launch type — DCP fallback runs bare dotnet with no arguments #16997, Extension doesn't show running apphosts #16922, create new project in vs code when project outside of current workspace should add folder into the workspace and create a directory for that new project #16850, Aspire debug inconsistency- current working directory #16575, JavaScript/Vite resource logs are missing in Aspire Dashboard when running AppHost from VS Code #16468, VS Code extension walkthrough biases toward C# despite polyglot support #16256)
• CODEOWNERS contains an extension entry that maps to the VS Code extension tree

Confidence: high
Needs human?: no

Dry-run mode — no labels or milestone applied. Reply /triage apply to promote, or edit and reapply.

[davidfowl]

Should use aspire ls to do so!

[ellahathaway]

I have a draft of the suggested changes in #17506, which adds discovered AppHosts to the panel as a flat list when no AppHost is running. However, once an AppHost starts, those discovered items disappear and you're back to seeing only the running instance(s). This creates a blind spot: you can't see what other AppHosts are available in your workspace while one is already active.

I think more restructuring of the extension panel is needed to fully address this issue. The panel could use a dual-section view, such as "Running AppHosts" and "AppHosts", so both are visible simultaneously. When an AppHost starts running, it moves into the "Running AppHosts" group while the remaining discovered projects stay visible under "AppHosts". This work would benefit from the changes in #17408.

[JamesNK]

An alternative is to display non-running apphosts as a single tree item alongside the running app hosts. In other words, there is one view for both.

I like this more because they're all app hosts, just some are running vs non-running. Seperate sections would be for if there was different kinds of data to display in the pane.

It would be useful to look at what other extensions do to see if there is prior art we can copy. The docker VS Code extension would be good to look at. Or k8s extension.

[JamesNK]

e.g. containers section in docker extension

(I don't have it installed, screenshot found on web)

[ellahathaway]

An alternative is to display non-running apphosts as a single tree item alongside the running app hosts. In other words, there is one view for both.

I like this more because they're all app hosts, just some are running vs non-running. Seperate sections would be for if there was different kinds of data to display in the pane.

Yeah makes sense. The separate sections idea came from the source control view in VS Code ("Staged Changes" + "Changes"), but a unified list with state indicators is cleaner here.

Something like:

ASPIRE
 ▼ MyApp.AppHost
     ├─ frontend
     ├─ apiservice
     └─ redis
   MyOtherApp.AppHost

Running AppHosts would be collapsible with their resources underneath, and non-running ones would be non-expandable items with Run/Debug available via right-click context menu. Both would use distinct icons to indicate their state.

I'll poke around at the Docker extension and some others for inspiration/different ideas.