Your first session
About five minutes: install, add two provider keys, seat three roles, send one message. You need three configured models with three roles assigned before the team can work — two seats has no tiebreaker, one seat is just a regular chat.
1 · Open the chat
After installing and reloading the window, any of these opens the panel:
- The AI Orchestra icon on the Activity Bar — drag it out of the ⋯ overflow to pin it
Ctrl+Alt+O/Cmd+Alt+O- The AI Orchestra button in the status bar
- Command Palette → AI Orchestra: Open Chat — or Open Chat Window to pop it out as a tab
2 · Add your provider keys
Type /settings in the composer. For each provider — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google or xAI — pick it from the dropdown, paste the key, Save Key, then Fetch Models and assign a role.
Keys are stored in vscode.SecretStorage on your machine. They are never logged, never proxied, and never sent anywhere except direct to the provider.
Already keep keys in a .env.local? Put it in the project folder and click Import keys from .env.local. Vendor-doc and SDK spellings are recognised; near-misses such as OPENAI_API_ADMIN_KEY are deliberately ignored.
3 · Seat three roles
| Seat | Put here | Why |
|---|---|---|
drafter | Your best code model | The only seat with write authority. This one earns its rent. |
reviewer | A different model family | Read-only. A different training distribution maximizes useful disagreement. |
indexer | The longest context window | Read-only. It holds the whole repo and surfaces cross-file risks. |
4 · Sanity check
Send a normal message with no slash — “summarize the project structure”. The Drafter should stream a reply. If you get a system message instead, it names what is missing: usually an unassigned role or an unsaved key.