ChatGPT for VS Code is an unofficial Visual Studio Code extension that integrates OpenAI’s ChatGPT directly into the editor. One of the earliest and most popular extensions of its kind โ about 3,400 stars on GitHub โ it puts a chat panel beside your code and adds right-click commands that send selected code to ChatGPT for explanations, refactoring, bug hunting and documentation. It is free under the ISC license; the codebase was last updated in 2023.
After signing in with an OpenAI account or supplying an API key, you can converse with GPT-3.5 or GPT-4 in a dedicated sidebar, keep a history of conversations, and export chats as Markdown. Editor commands cover the tasks developers ask about most: explain this code, refactor it, find problems, write tests, add comments or generate documentation, with the model’s answer rendered with syntax highlighting and a one-click way to insert code back into your file. The extension supports custom prompts, so teams can encode their own review checklists or style rules as reusable commands. As an unofficial community project it depends on OpenAI’s web/API availability, but for many developers it was the tool that first made AI pair programming feel native to VS Code.
The extension is completely free and open source under the ISC license. You bring your own OpenAI account or API key, and any API usage is billed by OpenAI.
ChatGPT for VS Code is for developers who want lightweight ChatGPT assistance โ explanations, refactors and quick answers โ embedded in their editor without switching to a separate AI coding product.