Pawn Break

Take a pawn break while waiting for your agent code to finish! This extension embeds Lichess's chess puzzle trainer directly in Cursor/VS Code.

Features

• Solve chess puzzles from Lichess without leaving your editor
• Opens in a side panel so you can keep an eye on your code
• Automatically opens a new puzzle when you submit a prompt (optional setup)

Usage

Open a Puzzle Manually

1. Open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P on Mac or Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux)
2. Type "Pawn Break: Open Puzzle"
3. Start solving puzzles!

Auto-Open on Prompt Submission

You can have Pawn Break automatically open a puzzle every time you submit a prompt to Cursor's AI. This uses Cursor Hooks:

1. Open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P)
2. Run "Pawn Break: Setup Auto-Trigger"
3. That's it! The command creates a .cursor/hooks.json and a small shell script in your workspace. The next time you submit a prompt, a puzzle will appear automatically.

Note: The auto-trigger uses Cursor Hooks, which run shell scripts. This works on macOS and Linux. Windows support is not yet available.

Installation

From the Marketplace

Search for "Pawn Break" in the Extensions view (Cmd+Shift+X / Ctrl+Shift+X) in Cursor or VS Code, or install it directly:

• VS Code Marketplace: Pawn Break
• Open VSX Registry: Pawn Break

Build & Load Locally

If you want to run a local build instead of the marketplace version:

1. Clone the repo and install dependencies:

   git clone https://github.com/mrdmnd/pawnbreak.git
   cd pawnbreak
   npm install

2. Package the extension into a .vsix file:

   npm run package

   This produces pawn-break-<version>.vsix in the project root.

3. Install the .vsix in Cursor / VS Code:

   • Open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P)
   • Run "Extensions: Install from VSIX..."
   • Select the generated .vsix file

4. Set the auto-trigger via the command palette: "Pawn Break: Setup Auto-Trigger"

Development Mode (Debug)

1. Open this folder in VS Code / Cursor
2. Press F5 to launch a new Extension Development Host window
3. In the new window, open the Command Palette and run "Pawn Break: Open Puzzle"

Changes to extension.js are picked up each time you relaunch (F5).

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Publishing (maintainer notes)

Prerequisites

npm install -g @vscode/vsce ovsx

Bump the version

Edit version in package.json, then:

npm run package          # sanity-check that the .vsix builds cleanly

Publish to VS Code Marketplace

vsce publish

You need a Personal Access Token (PAT) for the mrdmnd publisher. Create one at https://dev.azure.com/mrdmnd/_usersSettings/tokens with the Marketplace > Manage scope. On first use, run vsce login mrdmnd and paste the token.

Publish to Open VSX Registry

npm run publish:ovsx

Requires the OVSX_TOKEN environment variable. Generate a token at https://open-vsx.org/user-settings/tokens.

Post-publish checklist

• Tag the release: git tag v<version> && git push --tags
• Verify the listing on the VS Code Marketplace
• Verify the listing on Open VSX

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Credits

Chess puzzles provided by Lichess — a free, open-source chess server.