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After the environment is ready, use this shortest path to confirm the extension works: open the panel → pick a provider → add credentials → send a message.

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Open the panel

Use any of these:
  • Click the CC GUI icon in the Activity Bar
  • Run CC GUI: Open CC GUI from the Command Palette
  • Click the CC GUI icon on the right side of the editor title bar
Open a real workspace first. Without a folder, file mentions and the working directory have no context.

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Choose a provider

Open the provider picker at the bottom of the input box and pick one: Use Claude Code the first time. Per-engine details are in Providers / CLI.

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Add credentials

Open Settings → Provider management.
Three common setups:
  1. Add provider: enter a name, API key, and base URL. Official Anthropic is https://api.anthropic.com.
  2. Use local settings.json: authorize reading ~/.claude/settings.json. The extension does not change this file.
  3. Use CLI login: use this when you already signed in with the Claude CLI in a terminal.
Third-party endpoints such as Zhipu, Kimi, DeepSeek, MiniMax, and OpenRouter use Third-party / proxy presets.
API keys stay on this computer only. Mask them before you take a screenshot or recording.

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Send a short message

Go back to the chat view and type:
Press Enter to send. If you changed the send shortcut to Cmd/Ctrl+Enter, use that instead. When it works you will see:
  1. Your message appear in the chat
  2. The status change to thinking or tool use
  3. The assistant start streaming a reply
First chat

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Mentions you can try immediately

Send a code selection from the editor to CC GUI:
  1. Select a few lines
  2. Right-click and choose Send Selection Reference to Claude, or press Cmd+Alt+K (Windows / Linux: Ctrl+Alt+K)
  3. The input box inserts @file-path#Lstart-end
  4. Add “Explain this code”, then send
You can also right-click a file in Explorer and choose Send File Path to Claude.

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If nothing comes back

More troubleshooting is in FAQ.

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Next steps