jupyterlab_ai_code_assistants_extension

A full launcher and manager for every AI code assistant in JupyterLab - Claude Code, Codex, Kimi, Gemini and DeepSeek. Start, resume, fork, switch, and clean up CLI sessions from a side panel per assistant - one click lands you in the right terminal with the assistant already running, no duplicate tabs, no UUID hunting. One install replaces the separate jupyterlab_claude_code_extension, jupyterlab_codex_extension and jupyterlab_kimi_code_extension packages and migrates their settings and favourites automatically.

Why this extension

One principle: the vendors know best how to build the agent harness; we know best how to make it work in JupyterLab.

Chat-panel extensions re-implement the agent loop and trail the real tool. This one runs the genuine, unmodified CLIs in JupyterLab terminals - skills, subagents, MCP, hooks, plan mode, every release the day it lands. The extension owns the JupyterLab side:

• Launching - new, resumed, or forked sessions, with or without permission prompts, no wrapper shell, correctly sized before the assistant draws its first frame
• Finding - every project in one panel per assistant: favourites, search, live activity
• Reusing - clicking a session focuses its existing terminal, never a duplicate
• Managing - parallel conversations: switch, fork with a name, delete - no --resume pickers, no raw UUIDs

Features

• One install, every assistant - Claude Code, Codex, Kimi, Gemini and DeepSeek in one package, each with its own right-side panel and official mark
• Provider registry - assistant-specific behaviour lives in one module per assistant, so adding one changes no core file
• Joint settings page - one settings section covers all assistants with a per-assistant toggle, all on by default; toggling takes effect without a JupyterLab reload
• Three-section side panel - Favorites, Recent and All projects, each scrolling independently
• One-click resume - click a row to resume its session in a terminal, reusing an open terminal for the project. A Kimi or DeepSeek conversation started with + opens a second terminal when its first is still open
• File browser follows the opened session - opening a session moves the file browser to its project folder, a setting on by default; a right-click on a panel header toggles this and moves the panels between the left and right sidebars
• Launcher tiles - each enabled assistant has a tile in the Launcher's AI Assistants section; a click opens the assistant in the file browser's current folder, resuming that folder's conversation when one exists
• Your terminal's claude -c follows the panel (Claude) - selecting a conversation row makes plain claude -c in that project resume the same conversation, even one that has been compacted
• Conversation switcher - a right-click "Switch and Manage Sessions" submenu lists a project's other conversations by name and short id. "Manage Sessions..." opens a searchable list with multi-select delete and copy-id
• Branch session - fork the current conversation into a new named session from the right-click menu
• Rename session - name a conversation from the right-click menu, and the panel shows the name the assistant itself kept
• Launch modes under each assistant's own name - Claude's skip-permissions, Codex's approval bypass, Kimi's --yolo and Gemini's YOLO; unsafe variants carry a shield glyph
• Coloured terminal tabs - each session's colour tints its terminal tab, and a branched session inherits its parent's colour. Claude's /color supplies a default and Kimi derives a stable one; Codex, Gemini and DeepSeek have no colour until you set one
• Your newest colour choice wins - a colour set on a terminal tab is remembered for that conversation; a Kimi or DeepSeek conversation that has never been resumed, including one started with +, is the exception, because its id cannot be read yet. In Claude Code whichever of the tab colour and /color you used last wins, and Reset Tab Colour in the right-click menu hands back the colours you set by hand
• Favorites - star projects from the right-click menu; favourites from the standalone extensions are migrated on first run
• Remove and clean up - remove a project's history or its extra parallel sessions from the right-click menu, with a confirmation. Removed files honour JupyterLab's "move files to trash" setting
• Activity at a glance - each row shows its last activity in an aligned column. Recent rows light up, stale rows dim, and parallel conversations show a branch icon and count
• Remote control indicator and background agents (Claude) - a green dot marks sessions under remote control, and a bg chip marks a conversation held by a background agent. Clicking stops the agent and resumes the conversation in your terminal
• Search - a fuzzy filter per panel, toggled by the funnel button
• Presentation modes - label rows by session name or by path relative to the JupyterLab root
• Conflict-safe upgrade - if a retired standalone extension is still installed, its panel wins and this extension stands down for that assistant
• DeepSeek in the terminal - the panel runs the community TUI bundle, because the DeepSeek Harness ships no terminal chat. Without the bundle a launch is refused before a terminal opens
• Auto-disabled when absent - an assistant whose CLI is not on PATH shows no panel
• Open Callback - when an assistant's login redirects to a loopback address that will not load, run Open Callback from the command palette and paste the link. The server makes the request and says whether the login accepted it

Requirements

• JupyterLab >= 4.6.0
• Python >= 3.10
• At least one assistant CLI on PATH: claude, codex, kimi, gemini, or dsh (the DeepSeek Harness)
• For DeepSeek: the community TUI bundle mounted as the tui profile, dsh plugin --profile tui add @deepseek-harness-tui/dsh-tui - a DeepSeek launch without it is refused with these words before any terminal opens

Install

Developers must install via the project Makefile (which orchestrates clean, build, and pip install of the resulting wheel):

make install

The companion packages are version floors, so make install here pulls their published releases and replaces a locally built jupyterlab_colourful_tab_extension or jupyterlab_basic_terminal_extension. When verifying a change that spans this extension and a companion, install the companion last.

End-users can install the published package from PyPI:

pip install jupyterlab_ai_code_assistants_extension

Agent skill

The wheel ships a session-operations skill for coding agents at share/jupyter/agents/skills/jupyterlab-ai-code-assistants-extension/SKILL.md. It covers finding, moving, splitting, renaming and promoting sessions, copying a session into another project under a fresh id, the task-list environment variables, and running Claude Code against Kimi K3 or DeepSeek, with two references for the rest - claude-operations.md for how claude -c and --resume choose a session and how to repair, promote and pin one, and cross-assistant-sessions.md for reading, inventorying, taking over and resuming sessions of Claude Code, Codex, Kimi, Gemini and DeepSeek.

After pip install, with the Python that runs the lab:

mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills
ln -s "$(python -c 'import sys; print(sys.prefix)')/share/jupyter/agents/skills/jupyterlab-ai-code-assistants-extension" ~/.agents/skills/jupyterlab-ai-code-assistants-extension

From a clone:

ln -s "$PWD/.agents/skills/jupyterlab-ai-code-assistants-extension" ~/.claude/skills/jupyterlab-ai-code-assistants-extension

Migrating from the standalone extensions

This package supersedes jupyterlab_claude_code_extension, jupyterlab_codex_extension and jupyterlab_kimi_code_extension. On first run it carries their settings and favourites over automatically, and it never replaces a setting you have already saved in this extension; uninstall the standalones once you are ready:

pip uninstall jupyterlab_claude_code_extension jupyterlab_codex_extension jupyterlab_kimi_code_extension

Tab colours stored by versions of THIS extension before 1.0.0 are carried over and keep tinting their tabs, but Reset Tab Colour will not offer them: the store from that version cannot tell a colour you set from one a branch inherited, and offering the wrong one would strip a branch of the colour it was forked with. Set the colour on that tab once more and it becomes yours to reset.

While a standalone extension is still installed, its panel is shown and this extension's panel for that assistant stays out of the way.

Uninstall

pip uninstall jupyterlab_ai_code_assistants_extension