New VSCode extension that takes automation to the next level

Recently I switched from using Alfred over to Raycast. What convinced me of Raycast is the simplicity the tool provides, plus the ability to simply create your custom commands/scripts.

Info: I already wrote about it: Using Raycast to speed up my prod…


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Elio Struyf

Recently I switched from using Alfred over to Raycast. What convinced me of Raycast is the simplicity the tool provides, plus the ability to simply create your custom commands/scripts.

Info: I already wrote about it: Using Raycast to speed up my productivity.

The more I use Raycast, the more I want to automate. A script I created was to start up my daily development tasks:

  • Open my VSCode editor with the right project loaded
  • Open my terminal to the right folder
  • Open Microsoft Edge to the Azure Portal
  • Open Google Chrome with my application URL

These tasks typically do not take a lot of time, but automating this by one command is so easy.

Taking it to the next level

To take it to the next level, I wanted to start my commands in VSCode as well. For my project I use two terminals:

  1. Open ngrok as my application needs to be accessible remotely.
  2. Start the local development server (Next.js in my case).

Unfortunately, you can only trigger certain actions in VSCode by shortcuts. That is why I thought to create a new VSCode Remote Control extension which allows you to send commands from anywhere on your device to the running VSCode instance.

Info: Check out the extension here: VSCode Remote Control.

The extension spins up a WebSocket server. By default, it will start it on port: 3710, but is configurable from the settings.

Show me what it can do

To speed up my process, I wanted to open two terminal instances in VSCode and run my commands in each of them.

In my Raycast script, all I had to do is add the following code:

echo "{ \"command\": \"workbench.action.terminal.newWithCwd\" }" | websocat ws://localhost:3710
echo "{ \"command\": \"workbench.action.terminal.sendSequence\", \"args\": { \"text\": \"npm run ngrok\\n\" } }" | websocat ws://localhost:3710
echo "{ \"command\": \"workbench.action.terminal.split\" }" | websocat ws://localhost:3710
echo "{ \"command\": \"workbench.action.terminal.focusAtIndex2\" }" | websocat ws://localhost:3710
echo "{ \"command\": \"workbench.action.terminal.sendSequence\", \"args\": { \"text\": \"cd solutions/msteams/webapp && npm run dev\\n\" } }" | websocat ws://localhost:3710

Important: this is not only created for Raycast. Once installed, you can run commands from anywhere on your device.

Here the result of this script:

The result of the script

Check out the VSCode extension here: VSCode Remote Control.


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Elio Struyf


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