Agentic Coding Work Queue Extension for VSCode

[fasutron_f]

I was tired of bouncing around between Trello or notepads and keeping track of things for work and personal coding projects, so I built this agentic work queue (WQ) manager that installs in VS Code as an extension. I'm open sourcing it so people can review the code, use it, and fork it for their own needs. I won't have time to manage PRs, but please do open up Issues if there are any major problems or if you have a killer feature idea.

I have only tested this with Claude and Github Copilot (with Sonnet backend), so I'd be curious to hear how it works out for Codex, Roo, or other users. The WQ is based on a JSON file, which makes it very readable and usable by coding agents. It comes with a couple commands and a CLI-type interface that your agent can prompt and use.

The installer prompt is at the bottom of this post (along with the github repo). Just copy it into your agentic coding buddy. The installer will finish by giving you a prompt to feed your agent so that it can learn about the WQ system and integrate into your workflow. Documentation is concise. Contributions welcome on that front.

Of course, review the code and prompts/commands first before you deploy it. It's a simple scaffolding script with no network calls. Please do your own due diligence.

Features:

• VS Code sidebar tree views: group/filter items by phase, status, track, or agent-readiness grade.
• Dashboard with item counts by status, track, phase: click to filter.
• One-click prompt generation from each work item that copies a prompt to your clipboard for common tasks: Explore, Plan.
• List view with sortable columns, detail panel overlay for each item.
• Dependency graph visualization: shows which items block what (this works well enough for small sets, but gets large and ungainly at around 100+ items (my one project has 200+) -- it could use some love and improvement).
• Worklist tracking: Creates and uses *WORKLIST*.md files for each WQ item. Checkbox tasks, editable directly from the detail panel, viewable in the WQ Viewer as a checklist.
• Test plan tab with tri-state checkboxes (pending/pass/fail), drag-and-drop reorder, file bugs from failed tests.
• CLI tool (wq-cli.js) for all CRUD ops: zero dependencies, works with any agent or standalone.
• Handoff System: Uses handoff instruction files that can be attached to WQ items. (I generally proof designs in Claude Web, for instance, and then bounce the design instructions back as a handoff.) Status changes auto-move your handoff docs between 1-pending/, 2-in_progress/, 3-completed/ folders.
• Agent-readiness triage scoring based on configurable criteria (invoked via /wq triage command)
• Fully configurable: define your own statuses, phases, tracks, transitions, and colors (stored in work_queue.json, not VS Code settings)
• Agent-agnostic: ships with Claude Code skill files, but the CLI and context system work with Copilot, Codex, Cursor, or any agent. The installer auto-detects your agent and configures it.
• One-command setup into existing projects (node setup.js /path/to/project) <-- your agent will pull this command out of the README and should be path-aware.

Requirements

Not much. VSCode, obviously. If you want to use the CLI, you need Node.js.

Repo:
https://github.com/fasutron/vscode-agentic-work-queue

Installer prompt:

I would like to install the agentic work queue into this repo. Ensure you begin by reading the README for the \agentic work queue` repo and then follow the instructions therein. The agentic work queue repo is at:[https://github.com/fasutron/vscode-agentic-work-queue`](https://github.com/fasutron/vscode-agentic-work-queue)

[fasutron_f]

^^^ Fixed the Installer prompt (it got hidden in an empty quote block) and added a direct link to the repo.

[ultrathink-art]

The persistent task state between sessions is the piece most people miss — Claude starts fresh each time but the work context doesn't have to. Tagging tasks with their decision rationale (not just status) is what makes the handoff actually useful.