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Tab Mode in VS Code Sidebar — Parallel Isolated Agent Sessions with Git Worktree Backing #10267
Khayrulbuet13
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Overview
I'd like to take this on as an open source contribution. I'm a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory working in ML, and in my free time I contribute to open source — this is a workflow problem I hit regularly and want to fix properly.
Ready to deliver within 15 days of approval via staged focused PRs per contribution guidelines.
The Problem
The Cline VS Code extension supports only one active agent session at a time in the sidebar. To work on two independent features in parallel today, a developer must:
This is a real productivity bottleneck. Two independent tasks — say, implementing Feature A and Feature B — have no reason to share context, memory, or file state. Forcing them into the same session or window is an artificial constraint.
Prior Art & Why This Is the Right Moment
Inside Cline's own ecosystem:
Outside Cline:
The infrastructure already exists inside Cline. This proposal is simply the VS Code UI layer that connects it — building on top of what the team has already laid the groundwork for.
Proposed Solution: Tab Bar in the Sidebar
A single tab bar row added between the existing topbar and the content area. Nothing else in the shell changes.
Each tab is:
ClineProviderinstance with its own state, context, history, and model configfeat/auth,feat/dashboard,bugfix/login)Tab dot color system:
Chat mode (green) is specifically for when you want to think out loud with the agent — explore a problem, sketch an approach, finalize a rough idea — before ever entering Plan or Act mode. No file changes, no worktree operations. Pure ideation.
No shared context. No file conflicts. Review and merge per branch.
Concrete Use Case
Working on a project with two independent features that should not share context:
feat/authin its own worktreefeat/dashboardin its own worktreeThis is identical to how Cursor 2.0's parallel agent sidebar works, but built natively into Cline's open-source extension.
Implementation Plan (15-day delivery)
3 focused PRs, each independently reviewable:
PR 1 — TabBar UI component (Days 1–4)
webview-ui/src/components/TabBar.tsx(new)PR 2 — Multi-instance ClineProvider (Days 5–10)
src/core/ClineProvider.ts,src/extension.tsPR 3 — Git worktree binding per tab (Days 11–15)
What I'm NOT changing
References
Happy to discuss architecture details, adjust scope, or break into smaller pieces if preferred. Ready to start immediately on approval.
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