dcc — Devcontainer Companion

A terminal UI for creating and configuring devcontainers. Pick templates, toggle features, search extensions — all from one dashboard. No more hand-editing JSON.

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What it does

dcc gives you a persistent hub where you configure your devcontainer step by step:

• Templates — Browse the full containers.dev catalog, fuzzy-search, preview README, configure options
• Features — Same for features — add Docker-in-Docker, Node, Python, etc. with per-feature options
• VS Code Extensions — Search the Marketplace, toggle extensions on/off
• JetBrains Plugins — Search the JetBrains Plugin Repository
• Settings — Edit remoteUser, ports, lifecycle commands, env vars, mounts
• Build — Test-build your devcontainer without leaving the hub (auto-rebuilds with --no-cache when config changed)
• Open in VS Code — Launch directly into the devcontainer

The right panel always shows your current devcontainer.json with syntax highlighting, so you see every change immediately.

Install

devcontainer CLI

dcc requires the devcontainer CLI for template apply, build, and open:

• Via VS Code (strongly recommended): Cmd+Shift+P → "Dev Containers: Install devcontainer CLI"
• Via npm: npm install -g @devcontainers/cli (Build only, no Open)

The VS Code variant is strongly recommended — it supports all features including open (launch directly into the devcontainer) and templates apply. The npm variant only supports Build. dcc detects which variant is installed and shows/hides menu items accordingly.

dcc

From source (requires Go 1.22+):

go install github.com/mochlast/devcontainer-companion@latest

Or build locally:

git clone https://github.com/mochlast/devcontainer-companion.git
cd devcontainer-companion
make install

This installs the dcc binary to your $GOPATH/bin.

Usage

# Open hub for current directory
dcc

# Open hub for a specific project
dcc -w ~/projects/my-app

# Bypass catalog cache (re-fetch templates/features)
dcc --no-cache

That's it. dcc creates .devcontainer/devcontainer.json if it doesn't exist and opens the hub.

Keyboard shortcuts

The hub menu supports both arrow navigation and single-key shortcuts:

Key	Action
t	Set Template
f	Add/Remove Features
e	VS Code Extensions
j	JetBrains Plugins
c	Edit Settings
b	Build
o	Open in VS Code
q	Exit

Inside pickers, type to fuzzy-search. Press ? to preview the README of a template or feature.

License

MIT