Field Note · Blog

Asking for /buddy in the VSCode Extension

A field note on opening issue #45087 — the VSCode native extension ships Quorum, the CLI ships /buddy, and the gap between them costs a workflow seam. Asking for parity, or at least a setting.

There’s a specific kind of friction that comes from running two surfaces of the same tool side-by-side just to get one feature out of the second one. That’s where I am with the Claude Code VSCode extension and the CLI — and on April 8, 2026 I opened issue #45087 asking for parity.

The shape of the gap

The VSCode native extension is good. Its built-in companion, Quorum, works. But /buddy — the small, character-driven companion that lives in the terminal — isn’t surfaced in the extension. You can run the CLI in the integrated terminal, sure, but now you’ve fragmented conversation context across two surfaces and burned screen real-estate doing it.

The narrow ask: let users opt into /buddy in the VSCode extension, either as the default companion or via a setting that toggles between Quorum and /buddy.

Why this isn’t just personal preference

  • The Fiora Studio team built an MCP-server replacement that brings /buddy-style companions back across CLI surfaces and IDE integrations. There’s enough demand to motivate someone to write 21 species, 5 personality stats, XP and leveling, and speech bubbles for a coding companion.
  • A separate issue (#45596, Bring Back /buddy: 511 Reasons Why) is tracking the broader regression. The VSCode parity ask is a subset, scoped to one environment.
  • The labels on the issue read the shape: enhancement, area:ide, platform:vscode, platform:windows. Not a bug — a parity gap.

Three resolution shapes

  1. Default-Quorum, opt-in /buddy. The extension keeps Quorum as default but adds a setting (claude-code.companion: "quorum" | "buddy") that surfaces /buddy when chosen.
  2. Both running. Less ideal — companion clutter, two characters fighting for the same screen corner.
  3. Extension chooses one, CLI chooses one. Status quo. Forces a dual-surface workflow for anyone who wants /buddy while living in VSCode.

Option 1 is the smallest patch with the largest unblock. It also matches how most VSCode extensions handle similar choices — theme variants, keymap variants, preview vs. stable channels.

Why a field note exists for a feature request

Mostly to mark the date and the shape of the ask in case the eventual resolution lands somewhere unexpected. Field-journal habit: write down what you noticed, link to the original, move on. This is a continuation of the Fathom Lives thread — that one was about losing /buddy in the CLI and rehatching it as a Codex skill; this one is the narrower CLI–to–extension parity ask that came out of the same daily friction.

The issue: anthropics/claude-code#45087 — Expose /buddy companion in the VSCode native extension. Opened April 8, 2026. Status: open as of this writing.