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IDE Emulation

When IDE Emulation is enabled, Switchboard registers itself as an IDE for Claude CLI. File opens and proposed edits appear in a side panel next to the terminal instead of being sent to an external editor.

IDE Emulation

How it works

Claude CLI discovers connected IDEs via the MCP protocol. When Switchboard is running with IDE Emulation on, Claude finds Switchboard and routes file-open and diff requests to it. The result is that every file Claude wants to show you appears inside Switchboard rather than popping open VS Code or another editor.

File viewer

Clicking an OSC 8 file:// hyperlink in the terminal output opens the file in the side panel with syntax highlighting. You can also right-click any file link in the terminal and choose Open in panel.

Windows drive letters

A file:// URI is turned into a disk path with the WHATWG URL parser, which does not special-case a Windows drive letter the way Node's url.fileURLToPath does: file:///C:/a/b.js parses to a pathname of /C:/a/b.js, leading slash kept. Passed on unchanged, path.resolve() in the main process turns that into C:\C:��.js, which never exists; read-file-for-panel answers { ok: false } and the panel silently does not open. fileUriToPath strips that leading slash, and it is the single conversion point for both the left-click and the context-menu paths.

Known limit: a UNC URI (file://server/share/x) still loses its host, because the host lives in URL.hostname and only the pathname is read.

Diff review

When Claude proposes a file change, the side panel shows a diff — the old version on one side and the proposed edit on the other (or as a unified patch in inline mode).

You can:

  • Accept the entire change
  • Reject the entire change
  • Accept individual chunks (inline mode only) — review each hunk separately and submit the partial result

Inline and side-by-side views

Toggle between views using the button in the side panel toolbar. Your preference is persisted across sessions.

  • Inline (unified) — additions and deletions shown in a single pane. Supports partial accept.
  • Side-by-side — original file on the left, proposed change on the right.

Disabling IDE Emulation

To disable IDE Emulation (for example, if you want Claude to use VS Code or Cursor):

  1. Open Global Settings
  2. Uncheck IDE Emulation
  3. Save

This stops Switchboard from registering as an IDE. Claude CLI will then discover and connect to your real editor instead. The change takes effect for new sessions — sessions already running are not affected.

Note: IDE Emulation is a global-only setting. It cannot be overridden per project.