VSCode Chatgpt Easy Copy

Directly copy selected code or files from vscode to a chatgpt tab in browser VSCode Chatgpt Easy Copy is a simple utility to make it slightly convenient to copy code/text and files from vscode into chatgpt's textarea using commands. There are two components in the utility - this chrome extension and a vscode extension. Both must be installed and running for it to work. The vscode counterpart can be installed from the extension marketplace or manually following the instructions at https://github.com/nikhils98/vscode-chatgpt-easy-copy/tree/main

• How it works?

The vscode extension initializes a websocket server at port 8765 on startup which the chrome extension connects to. On execution of a command, the selected text or contents of file(s) are sent to the chrome extension, via websocket, which manipulates chatgpt's DOM to input in the prompt textarea and send.

More information about the vscode extension can be found at https://github.com/nikhils98/vscode-chatgpt-easy-copy/tree/main/vscode

-- Service Worker This is where the crux of the logic resides for the chrome extension. It's a background script managing the websocket connection to the vscode extension and responsible for injecting a function to manipulate chatgpt's DOM when a command is received.

It uses chrome's scripting api (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/scripting#description) to inject the function in runtime and requires host permissions for chatgpt to do so. A service worker can become inactive after 30s of idle time so to prevent that a keepalive message is sent to the websocket server every 20s.