Chanh 🍋

Chanh /ch-ahn/ (n.) — lime or lemon in Vietnamese

A VS Code extension that downloads, hosts, and runs the Lemonade Server embeddable binary locally, enabling AI chat with local LLMs directly in VS Code.

Features

• Managing/downloading Lemonade models
• Chat integration: @chanh chat participant for quick Q&A, plus chat models with tool-calling support in the native VS Code model picker (agent mode, streaming, and vision)
• Everything runs locally, and work offline
• Multiple server modes: system-installed Lemonade Server, Embeddable Lemonade, or custom URL
• Just another way to integrate with VS Code

Chat Commands

The @chanh chat participant supports the following slash commands:

• /fix - Generate a fix for the selected code
• /explain - Explain the selected code

Server Management

The tree view in the sidebar shows the active server, its status and its models. You can pick different server modes, such as using the system-installed Lemonade Server or downloading the binary version.

Agent mode and the model picker

Models served by the active Lemonade Server are exposed to VS Code's native model picker under the Chanh 🍋 provider. Only models carrying both the chat and tool-calling labels are listed, since agent mode relies on tool calling. Vision models (vision label) are tagged in the picker and accept image attachments.

Plain chat models (no tool-calling label) remain available through the @chanh participant. chanh.chatModel remembers the last model used for @chanh (leave empty to be prompted).

Configuration

Setting	Default	Description
chanh.chatModel	null	Model to use for chat (leave empty to be prompted)
chanh.customServerUrl	null	Custom Lemonade Server URL (used in CUSTOM mode)
chanh.lemondPort	8000	Port for the bundled lemond binary
chanh.lemonadePort	13305	Port for the Lemonade Server (System)
chanh.serverMode	"LEMONADE"	Which Lemonade Server to use: LEMONADE, LEMOND, or CUSTOM
chanh.maxLoadedModels	(unset)	Maximum number of loaded models. Use -1 for unlimited.

Release Notes

0.1.1

• Add backends/recipes management

0.1.0

• Change the extension name from Lemon to Chanh
• Add download function into the treeview
• Label capabilities of the model
• Integrate into the VS Code agent harness

0.0.2

• Add icon

0.0.1

• Lemonade management treeview
• Chat integration

Enjoy!