VS Code’s unofficial ChatGPT sidebar, open-sourced after 500k grabs

What it does

gencay/vscode-chatgpt is a VS Code extension that wires OpenAI’s GPT models into a sidebar chat panel. You type prompts, get streaming replies, and push suggested code straight into your files or create new ones with a click. It also exports your conversation history as Markdown and tries to auto-continue partial code responses when OpenAI cuts off mid-stream.

The interesting bit

The author open-sourced the project after it racked up roughly half a million downloads, then stripped out browser capabilities to turn it into a community integration point. That makes it less a product and more of a reference implementation that other extensions, like Genie AI and ChatGPT Reborn, have since forked and continued.

Key highlights

• Supports GPT-4, GPT-3.5, GPT-3, and Codex via your own OpenAI API key.
• Streams responses in a sidebar conversation window with a stop button to save tokens.
• One-click or keyboard-shortcut actions to fix code, create files, or insert suggestions directly from the chat.
• Ad-hoc prompt prefixes and the ability to edit and resend previous prompts.
• Automatic detection and continuation of truncated code responses.

Verdict

Worth a look if you want to see how a ChatGPT sidebar extension is built or need a starting point for your own VS Code AI integration. If you just want the most actively maintained end-user experience, the README itself nudges you toward its forks.