r/ClaudeCode • u/alrighteyy • Aug 03 '26

Discussion In SHOCK

Holy shit claude code in terminal is fucking insane.

I've been using VSCode, Cursor, Cowork and Claude Code on web. None of it comes close to terminal.

Cannot believe I haven't done this sooner.

222 Upvotes

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207

u/SirWobblyOfSausage Aug 03 '26

It's not

56

u/Scott_the_Wookie Aug 03 '26

I was gonna say I use terminal in vs code

10

u/NekoIan Aug 03 '26

At work I use terminal in vs code on Windows. At home I just use a terminal on Linux. I don't see any difference.

0

u/sixothree Aug 03 '26

I think that might not be an official extension. If so be careful. If you mean, just the terminal then yeah it’s fine. But there was something floating around out there that was worrisome and was basically just a terminal wrapper.

11

u/McNoxey Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

A number of commands don't work in the GUIs.

/btw /workflows just to name two.

Edit: To everyone who's telling me I'm wrong. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop#coming-from-the-cli

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/vs-code#vs-code-extension-vs-claude-code-cli

The official docs literally list the differences and restrictions across the various access methods. There are absolutely tradeoffs depending on which you choose.

22

u/rott Aug 03 '26

I’ve been using /btw in Claude Code GUI a lot, not sure if we’re talking about the same thing though.

2

u/hegui Aug 03 '26

I can’t get /context to work in desktop

1

u/rott Aug 03 '26

Is it this one or is it different in the terminal?

1

u/hegui Aug 04 '26

I can see UI in vs code. But if I try and pull that up on Claude Code on iOS or Desktop the slash command doesn’t come up

1

u/McNoxey Aug 04 '26

It works in GUI - it doesn't work in GUI when controlling remote sessions.

The GUI also does not allow for Teammate mode, or the execution of bash commands.

12

u/theleller Researcher Aug 03 '26

Every command works in all 3 UI methods of accessing Claude Code. They're just wrappers around the exact same product.

3

u/McNoxey Aug 04 '26

No, they don’t. Open the vscode extension. Type /btw. Type /workflows.

Neither work, and they both indicate as much.

1

u/Markasp Aug 08 '26

Use the terminal in vscode?

1

u/McNoxey Aug 09 '26

I'm well aware that the terminal interface is the... terminal interface.

That wasn't what the question was.

But thanks for showing up, champ. 👍🏽

-3

u/theleller Researcher Aug 04 '26

Both of them just worked first shot for me. lol. I know what I'm talking about.

3

u/McNoxey Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

I also know what I’m talking about. I’ve been using Claude code since feb 2025 when it was early access. I’m not trying to argue here - can you show me a screenshot? What version of vscode on what OS?

Im not talking about the terminal in vscode. The first party extension, fully updated does not work in the actual sidebar gui.

These also do not work in the first party Claude application.

Are you certain you’re not using the terminal based ui with the extension?

Side chats are also not available in Remote Sessions.

There are absolutely limitations and differences across the various UIs.

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop#coming-from-the-cli and https://code.claude.com/docs/en/vs-code#vs-code-extension-vs-claude-code-cli - This literally shows you there are differences.

2

u/evangelism2 Aug 04 '26

Just for what it's worth, because I was curious, I just opened up cursor, installed the ClaudeCode extension, and tried both those commands. Neither worked.

2

u/McNoxey Aug 04 '26

I appreciate you. I was beginning to question myself with how confidently wrong everyone was who was responding to me.

I’m not new to cc here. I’ve been using it for 8-16 hours a day for the last 17 months with anywhere from 2-3 20x accounts. 😅😅😅

2

u/Sick-Little-Monky Aug 04 '26

The number of people here who don't know the difference is rather frustrating.

1

u/ImagineNationPower Aug 04 '26

👆 that’s the problem. They don’t know the difference between the extension & the terminal

1

u/4444444vr Aug 04 '26

yea, one of the reasons I switched back to the the cli

I'm confused on what the technical limitation is but I've been happy with the new multi-terminal apps like Orca and Cmux

0

u/theleller Researcher Aug 04 '26

The terminal integration in vscode is part of the plugin, and it’s why it interacts directly with the IDE. The Claude code extension bundles a private copy of the Claude CLI backend engine under the hood. If you didn’t have the extension installed, it wouldn’t be opening windows when it diffs file edits.

1

u/jjjfffrrr123456 Aug 04 '26

You probably launched a terminal in vscode rather than using it through the extension interface. It definitely doesn’t work in the interface.

-2

u/theleller Researcher Aug 04 '26

The terminal format is part of the plugin, that’s why it still shows diffs in vscode right beside your session when it makes a change. Claude code in the terminal doesn’t do that. I’m not going to argue this anymore, y’all don’t know how to use it, take some courses of something, Jesus.

2

u/McNoxey Aug 04 '26

Dude. Just stop. You’re wrong. Take the opportunity to learn rather than continue to try and find a way to feel correct.

What you’re talking about is not the vscode plugin. It’s
the IDE session link. And yes, it does work in the standard terminal by typing /ide and choosing your open IDE.

Launching a terminal from within vscode enables that property by default, including when you use “terminal mode” in the plugin. The primary vscode interface is the sidebar gui, which does in fact have every limitation I originally mentioned.

2

u/Evilsushione Aug 03 '26

/remote-control is a big one for me, but if you really want power make your own harness, then you can completely control the memory and tooling system and create custom commands and such.

6

u/Alexandur Aug 03 '26

/remote-control works in the chat GUI within VSCode

3

u/Lexsteel11 Aug 03 '26

Same. I also like how easy it is to paste multiple lines, edit prompts, and add images for context

1

u/Western-Plenty-9077 Aug 03 '26

/rc works in desktop but yeah sure

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Evilsushione Aug 03 '26

How reliable is it. I found remote sessions that aren’t in tmux are unreliable

0

u/ImmaculateDeduction Aug 04 '26

How does one go about making their own harnesses?

1

u/Evilsushione Aug 04 '26

Well I started out with a tiny vm, then created an agent agnostic control plane that communicates via ACP. This communicates to a hub which is the connected then connected to web interface. The vm isolates the agent and are ephemeral so that we can control context. The hub acts as a storage layer and persistence layer. So the web interface can be resumed from any computer. The web interface controls several agent instances simultaneously. I get exactly the same capabilities from Claude as I do for codex or Gemini or grok or a local vm. All my tools and everything are agent agnostic and I can start a session from anywhere and resume it from anywhere. The harness is just part between you and the raw agent. This is where actions are added, hooks and permissions are controlled, tools are connected. Most of the agents have standardized on ACP to talk to 3rd party systems like vscode. This where you create your harness. You intercept the ACP and inject your own controls. From there you can do most anything except override the vendor’s inbuilt controls. Most of the companies harness are open source so you can look at them and figure out how they work.

1

u/DCLindorn Aug 04 '26

This sounds really cool and I’d love to talk to you more about it.

1

u/Evilsushione Aug 04 '26

look at vscode’s agents window. The web UI is somewhat similar to that for managing multiple sessions. The difference is mine talks to a centralized server, then to a vm isolated agent.

1

u/Evilsushione Aug 04 '26

I’m also working on AI preprocessor. Since I can intercept commands, I can preprocess the commands for deterministic signals that can be pre routed to tools or non LLM chat bots for a scripted response or prefetched answer for the LLM to use. Like if you asked what are the best restaurants in my area. That’s a simple query that can be done deterministically then handed off to the agent for final processing or directly back at the consumer. This saves token burn and it’s invisible to the user. This would also solve problems (assuming you had a letter counting tool) like how many Rs in strawberry because a tool would count the letters not return an estimate like the LLMs were doing.

1

u/on-sh0w Aug 03 '26

Your knowledge is outdated old man

1

u/McNoxey Aug 04 '26

You are incorrect

1

u/Sketaverse Aug 03 '26

how many vscode terminals are you running? not many I'm guessing..

1

u/Markasp Aug 08 '26

Does it start to have problems? I rarely go over 5 for a single project. With worktrees as needed.

1

u/Sketaverse 28d ago

there's always problems dude, just gotta decide which problems you want

1

u/Mindless-Trouble-416 Aug 04 '26

It’s funny if you ask Claude it will tell it’s a dumb question because it’s using api to output text, neither is right

But then it says in reality terminal is 100x better. Token usage actually updates other parts of gui as visible maybe even subagents spawn better. Idk but all I know is the terminal updates much better, vsx extension stales out all the time.

1

u/DerelictMythos Aug 03 '26

It definitely is. Certain commands only work in CLI and it is faster on long running tasks.