Skip to content

VS Code extension

The extension embeds Hydron into your editor: chat, inline diffs, and a serial monitor without leaving VS Code.

Select your project

Click the project dropdown at the bottom of the chat pane and select your project. Hydron pulls in your platform documentation, schematics, and indexed codebase. Every answer from that point is grounded in your actual hardware stack.

If you have not created one yet, click Create project to be taken to the Hydron Dashboard. See Project Dashboard.

Tip

Select your project before prompting. Hydron scopes every answer to that project's hardware stack.

The interface

Element What it is
Chat pane Your primary interface, in the Activity Bar, for generating code, diffs, and hardware queries
Agent mode selector A dropdown inside the chat input box. Select the mode matching your task.
Project dropdown Fixed at the bottom of the chat pane. Click to select your project.
Hydron Monitor A dedicated serial monitor panel at the bottom of your layout

Ask your first question

With your project selected, type a prompt in the chat input and press Enter.

Walk me through the main entry points and which hardware peripherals
are being initialized.

Tip

Use @filename to pull in a specific file as context. For example: "In @drv8316.cpp, explain the register write sequence."

See Context and mentions.

Drag and drop

Drag files from the Explorer directly into the chat pane. Hold Shift to drop external images such as schematic snippets or logic analyser screenshots for visual analysis.

Serial monitor

Hydron Monitor streams, filters, and sends data to your device from a panel at the bottom of your layout. See Serial monitor.

Slash commands

Type a command in the chat input and press Enter.

Command Aliases Description
/new /clear Start a fresh session, current input carries over
/sessions List and resume previous sessions
/compact /summarize Summarise history to free up context
/help Open the Help dialog
/local-review Local review, branch diff against base
/local-review-uncommitted Local review, staged and unstaged in the working tree

For the full reference, see Slash commands.

Tip

Each conversation is a session and persists across VS Code restarts. Long sessions slow the agent down. Run /compact to summarise history, or /new to start fresh.

Settings

Open Hydron Settings from the chat pane toolbar to control which tools run without asking, save a checkpoint before each file edit, and browse the plugin Marketplace. See Settings.

Next