Problem Description

Today, integrating desktop applications with Coder depends on dedicated extensions(e.g, VSCode and JetBrains) or manual configuration via the CLI (e.g., coder config-ssh). This creates:

• Friction for teams with limited engineering resources.
• Limited flexibility for integrating new or less commonly used tools.
• Slower adoption of Coder for users dependent on specific local tools.

Desired Solution

Introduce a standardized, extensible URI scheme (coder://) that leverages Coder Desktop to streamline application launching. This is very similar to the existing RDP handling of Coder Desktop.

Example URI:

coder://authority/v0/open/ws/<workspace>/agent/<agent>/uri?=<custom-app-uri>

Example for Zed IDE:

coder://authority/v0/open/ws/ws-abc123/agent/agent-xyz/uri?=zed://ssh/myworkspace.coder/folder

Behavior:

• Coder Desktop intercepts the coder:// URI.
• Verifies if Coder Desktop is installed and running.
• Handles tunneling and passes the custom URI to the target application.
• Fallback behavior:
  • Prompt user to install Coder Desktop if not found.
  • Show alert if the target application (e.g., zed://) is unsupported or not installed.
• UI modal fallback appears after 500ms if the URI fails to invoke, using the AppLink component.

Implementation Requirements

• UI:
  • Improve Connection Experience for IDEs that use external coder_app with a connection_helper Property #18694
• Documentation:
  • Update Coder Desktop documentation to provide examples for popular tools (Zed, VNC, DCV).
• Modules:
  • Update KasmVNC module to expose the vnc:// URI through coder://.
  • Update Amazon DCV module to expose the dcv:// URI through coder://.