Code Server Shared Terminals

A Linux/code-server extension that maps server-side persistent tasks to native terminal tabs. Multiple browser windows can discover and attach to the same task list without exposing tmux as the visible terminal UI.

Features

• A Shared Terminal Tasks view in Explorer.
• One hidden tmux session per persistent task.
• Native VS Code terminal tabs in every browser window.
• File watching plus polling for cross-window synchronization.
• Closing a shared terminal tab in any browser closes it in every connected browser; the tmux task stays available for reopening. Terminate and Delete stops the server task after confirmation.
• The registry stores only task ID, name, working directory, session name and creation time—not terminal output.
• Runtime paths, user, shell and environment are derived from the current code-server instance instead of /home/coder.
• Stale registry locks are recovered automatically after 30 seconds.

Requirements

• Linux code-server compatible with VS Code API ^1.127.0
• tmux 3.x available on the code-server host
• Node.js 22 for building from source

Install tmux before using the extension:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y tmux

# Fedora / RHEL
sudo dnf install -y tmux

# Alpine
sudo apk add tmux

Install

Install directly from Open VSX in code-server by searching for code-server-shared-terminals, or download the VSIX from GitHub Releases:

code-server --install-extension code-server-shared-terminals-0.2.2.vsix --force

After the first installation and after every extension update, activate the installed version in every code-server browser window that was already open:

1. Run Developer: Reload Window from the Command Palette in each open window; or
2. Refresh the complete browser page.

Newly opened browser windows already use the current extension version and do not need an additional reload. After activation, use the 共享终端任务 view in Explorer.

Build and test

npm ci
npm test
npm audit --omit=dev
npm run package

Artifact: code-server-shared-terminals-0.2.2.vsix.

Configuration

Setting	Default	Purpose
sharedTerminals.autoOpen	true	Map registered tasks to native terminal tabs automatically
sharedTerminals.registryPath	extension global storage	Shared task registry path
sharedTerminals.defaultCwd	first workspace, then user HOME	Default task working directory
sharedTerminals.tmuxPath	tmux	tmux executable name or absolute path
sharedTerminals.socketName	code-server-shared-tasks	Dedicated tmux socket name
sharedTerminals.shellPath	$SHELL, then /bin/sh	Shell for new tasks
sharedTerminals.environment	{}	Extra environment variables for new tasks

Do not put passwords or tokens in workspace settings. Use a secure host-level environment or secret manager.

Semantics and limits

• Two browsers attached to the same task operate the same PTY. Do not type into the same interactive task concurrently.
• Create separate tasks when users need independent work.
• This extension currently supports Linux/code-server only.
• The task registry is shared by extension hosts that use the same registry path and operating-system user.

Architecture and operations

• Architecture
• Runbook

License

MIT