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title VS Code Copilot Chat — OmniCopilot extension
version 3.8.50
lastUpdated 2026-08-18

VS Code Copilot Chat — OmniCopilot extension

OmniCopilot puts every model your OmniRoute serves into the native GitHub Copilot Chat model picker. No second sidebar, no separate chat UI — Copilot's agent mode, tool calling, MCP servers and custom instructions all keep working, just running on the model you pick.
Install (VS Code) Marketplace → diegosouzapw.omnicopilot
Install (forks) Open VSX — Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium, Theia, code-server, Gitpod, Antigravity, Kiro
Source / issues github.com/diegosouzapw/OmniCopilot (MIT)
Requires VS Code 1.104+

No Copilot subscription needed. Since VS Code 1.122 a language-model provider works without a GitHub sign-in and without any Copilot plan. Inline completions and embeddings-based features stay outside the provider API and still require Copilot.

Setup

  1. Run OmniRoute — npm install -g omniroute && omniroute (dashboard on http://localhost:20128).
  2. Install the extension — search "OmniRoute" in the Extensions view.
  3. Pick a model — Copilot Chat → model picker → Manage Models… → OmniRoute, then tick what you want.

Nothing to configure when OmniRoute runs on the default port. For a remote instance, open the OmniRoute icon in the Activity Bar (or run OmniRoute: Manage Connection) and set:

  • Server URL — the server root, e.g. http://192.168.0.15:20128. The /v1 suffix is appended by the extension; do not include it.
  • API key — only when the server sets REQUIRE_API_KEY. Stored in the OS keychain via VS Code SecretStorage, never in settings.json.

What the picker will show

The extension does not show the raw GET /v1/models payload — it shapes it, and the count you see is lower than the catalog size for two deliberate reasons.

It asks for one id per model

MODELS_CATALOG_PREFIX_MODE defaults to dual, which advertises every model twice — once under the short alias prefix and once under the canonical provider prefix — so older client configs keep resolving either form:

cc/claude-sonnet-4-6        ← alias prefix
claude/claude-sonnet-4-6    ← canonical prefix, same model

The extension requests GET /v1/models?prefix=alias so one id arrives per model, without changing the server-wide setting for your other clients. On a reference instance this collapsed 2345 entries to 1396 — 949 duplicates, zero models lost.

If you would rather fix it server-wide for every client, set the MODELS_CATALOG_PREFIX_MODE feature flag to alias in the dashboard. See API_REFERENCE → prefix for the query parameter and the per-mode table.

It hides models that cannot chat

The catalog also lists image, video, audio, rerank, embedding and moderation models. Those are rejected on a chat request anyway:

HTTP 400 — Model '<id>' is an image-generation model and cannot be used on
/v1/chat/completions. Use POST /v1/images/generations instead.

so they are filtered out by their type field before reaching the picker. Responses-API models are kept — every Codex / GPT-5.x entry advertises supported_endpoints: ["responses"], and OmniRoute translates those for /v1/chat/completions, so they are perfectly usable.

Providers you never configured

The catalog lists models from providers with an active connection plus every noAuth provider — the keyless ones that make up much of the free tier. That is intentional. To hide them, add them to blockedProviders in the dashboard settings; nothing changes in the extension.

Dashboard inside a VS Code tab

omnicopilot.dashboardOpen: "editor" renders the OmniRoute dashboard in an editor tab via the Simple Browser instead of an external browser. Embedding is opt-in on the server through DASHBOARD_ALLOW_EMBED=vscode, which serves the HTML pages with frame-ancestors 'self' vscode-webview: instead of the default frame-ancestors 'none' + X-Frame-Options: DENY. The API surface (/api, /v1, /v1beta, /a2a, /healthz) keeps the strict headers either way.

⚠️ It is a build-time flag, not a runtime one. Next.js compiles headers() into the route manifest, so next.config.mjs reads the variable while the bundle is built (next.config.mjs → resolveDashboardEmbedMode, scripts/build/dashboardEmbed.mjs). Exporting it in front of an already-built server changes nothing — the headers are baked.

# the variable has to be present on the BUILD command
DASHBOARD_ALLOW_EMBED=vscode npm run build        # or npm run build:release
npm start
How you installed Can you enable embedding?
From source ✅ set the variable on the build command, as above
npm install -g omniroute ❌ the published package ships a prebuilt bundle — build from source instead
Docker image ✅ docker build --build-arg DASHBOARD_ALLOW_EMBED=vscode -t omniroute:embed . — the prebuilt image on Docker Hub is not embed-enabled

Without an embed-enabled build the page refuses to frame, the extension detects that from the response headers and falls back to the external browser — nothing breaks, and it says so once. See ENVIRONMENT.md and issue #10273.

Configuring your other tools from inside VS Code

OmniRoute: Configure Coding CLI drives the omniroute CLI to write ready-to-use profiles for Codex CLI, Claude Code, Cline, Continue, Cursor, Aider, OpenCode, Goose, Crush, Qwen Code, Kilo and Roo — the same configs described in CLI-INTEGRATIONS.md. The API key is handed to the CLI through the OMNIROUTE_API_KEY environment variable, never on the command line.

Troubleshooting

Symptom Cause / fix
No OmniRoute models in the picker Server unreachable. The status-bar dot goes grey; run OmniRoute: Check Connection. Discovery is silent by design and contributes no models rather than prompting.
Every model appears twice You are on an OmniCopilot older than 1.0.1 — update. The extension now requests ?prefix=alias.
An image/audio model used to be listed and is gone Intentional since 1.0.1 — it could never answer a chat request.
Panel missing from the Activity Bar VS Code moves extra view containers into the "…" overflow at the bottom of the Activity Bar, and a container hidden via right-click stays hidden. Right-click the Activity Bar → tick OmniRoute, or open it with OmniRoute: Manage Connection.
Dashboard opens in the browser despite editor mode The server was not built with DASHBOARD_ALLOW_EMBED=vscode (see above) — setting it at startup on a prebuilt install does nothing. The fallback is deliberate.
Models list is stale after changing providers OmniRoute: Refresh Models, or the ↻ link in the panel.

See also