Building a VS Code Extension in 20 Minutes With ZCode & GLM

Feed ZCode one page of requirements and you can have a working VS Code extension 20 minutes later. That is exactly how ZCode Panel was born: the AI generated clean TypeScript, zero compile errors, and a packaged .vsix file.

The extension is free and open source, and it wires a native sidebar chat directly to the GLM Coding Plan.

What Happened

A single page of requirements went into http://zcode.z.ai, and ZCode produced a complete VS Code extension called ZCode Panel (v0.1.0). It includes:

• Sidebar Chat: a native VS Code sidebar wired to the GLM Coding Plan.
• SSE Streaming: real-time token streaming for instant responses.
• Active Context: attach your active file as prompt context with one click.
• Markdown Export: export the full chat history to clean markdown files.

The build took about 20 minutes and shipped as a .vsix with no compile errors. The source is on GitHub Repo.

Why It Matters

Autonomous coding agents are changing how fast tooling gets built. A 20-minute extension that used to take hours shows what happens when the AI handles the boilerplate and you hand over the requirements.