Getting started

Requirements

  • Visual Studio 2026, or Visual Studio 2022 version 17.14: Community, Professional or Enterprise.
  • The .NET 10 runtime. The MCP server runs on it. Wheelhouse tells you if it is missing.
  • Claude Code, installed. If it is not signed in yet, the Wheelhouse panel offers to sign you in, in your browser, the first time you start a session.

Install

  1. Double-click the .vsix file (download), and accept the installer's prompt.
  2. Restart Visual Studio.
  3. Open View › Wheelhouse and start a session.

Nothing else to configure. Updates install the same way, and set themselves up on the next start.

What the first start changes

A VSIX cannot run anything while it installs, so Wheelhouse finishes setting up the first time Visual Studio loads it, and again after each update. It runs in the background and never slows Visual Studio's start. It:

  1. Installs its MCP server to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\vs-claude-mcp. If a Claude Code session is already using an older copy, that copy is moved aside rather than stopped, and deleted once nothing uses it.
  2. Registers the server with Claude Code at user scope, as vs-claude-mcp, so terminal sessions can use it. A registration pointing somewhere else is replaced, and a project-local registration under the same name, which would override it, is removed.
  3. Adds usage guidance to ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md, between <!-- vs-claude-mcp:start --> and <!-- vs-claude-mcp:end --> markers. Updates replace only that block. Everything else in the file is yours and is left exactly as it was.

On later starts it checks and changes nothing unless something is out of date. If a step cannot finish (Claude Code not installed, say) a bar across the top of Visual Studio says what is wrong, and the step is tried again on the next start.

Trial and licence

Wheelhouse is free for 14 days from its first start. To keep using it after that, buy a licence: a one-off payment per developer that covers every future version. The key arrives by email; enter it in the panel's settings (the gear button, then Licence). The settings page also shows how many trial days are left.

A team buys all its seats in one purchase and shares the one key. Each seat covers one developer on up to two computers, and the link in the purchase email opens a page where computers can be removed from the licence.

Your first session

With a solution open, try asking Claude to explain a method before changing it, to find everything that uses a class, or to run the tests for one project. You will see its edits happen in the editor, with change markers in the margin; Ctrl+Z undoes them. Using the panel covers the rest.