Frequently asked questions

Visual Studio 2026, or Visual Studio 2022 version 17.14 (Community, Professional or Enterprise), the .NET 10 runtime, and Claude Code installed. Wheelhouse tells you if the runtime or Claude Code is missing, and signs Claude Code in for you if it is not signed in yet.

It is free for 14 days. After that a licence is a one-off payment per developer, covering every future version, with no subscription. Claude Code itself needs a Claude subscription or an Anthropic API account, billed separately by Anthropic.

The Wheelhouse panel and the fast in-process tools stop until you enter a licence key. Claude Code in a terminal keeps working with Wheelhouse's MCP server, using the slower PowerShell tools instead. Nothing you were in the middle of is interrupted: a session already running carries on.

Buy as many seats as you have developers, in one purchase. You get one key to share with them, and a private page listing the computers using it, where you can free a seat when someone leaves or a computer is replaced. Each seat covers one developer on up to two computers.

Yes: a full refund within 30 days of buying, for any reason. Ask through the contact form with the email address you bought with, and the refund goes back to the card or account you paid with. The licence terms page has the details.

Only now and then. It confirms the trial or licence with this site when Visual Studio starts and every few hours. A licensed computer can go 30 days without reaching the site before it asks to be connected again.

On its first start it copies its MCP server to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\vs-claude-mcp, registers that server with Claude Code at user scope, and adds a marked block of usage guidance to ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md. The Getting started page lists each step. It never stops a server that is running, and everything outside the marked block in CLAUDE.md is left as it was.

No. Wheelhouse sends no telemetry and no usage data, and never your code or your conversations. The only thing it sends is its licence check, described in the privacy policy. Your code reaches Anthropic only as part of Claude Code sessions you run, under Anthropic's terms, exactly as it would from a terminal.

Yes. The MCP server works from any Claude Code session in a terminal, and binds to the Visual Studio instance that session is running inside. The panel is optional.

The fast and semantic tools (Roslyn, the Error List, Test Explorer, the debugger's deeper features) run inside Visual Studio. Without the extension loaded, the server falls back to slower scripts, and some tools have no fallback at all. Restart Visual Studio after installing or updating.

Visual Studio 2022 version 17.14 and later, yes, as well as Visual Studio 2026. Earlier 2022 versions and Visual Studio Code are not supported.

Only when it asks to, and only Visual Studio: the whole IDE, one of its windows, a dialog it is showing, or the app you are debugging. Nothing else on your screen is ever captured. It is a tool Claude calls like any other, so your permission settings apply, and the pictures stay on your computer apart from the one Claude is shown.

Uninstall it from Extensions in Visual Studio. A VSIX can run nothing when it is removed, so the MCP server, its registration and the CLAUDE.md block stay behind; the Troubleshooting page has the commands to remove those too.