Standboy
mfbz · Coding · Productivity
Standboy is a VS Code and Cursor extension that drops a Game Boy emulator into your editor's sidebar and wakes it up while your AI coding agent works. When the agent starts generating, the panel expands; when it stops, the panel tucks away and the emulator pauses on the exact frame you left. It runs .gb, .gbc, and .gba files you supply yourself, keeps a persistent ROM library with saves and cover art, and sends no telemetry.
About Standboy
What Is Standboy
Standboy is a Game Boy emulator built into the sidebar of VS Code and its forks, including Cursor. Its pitch is simple: agent turns can take minutes, and the real cost of that AI agent wait time isn't boredom, it's the tab switch to Twitter, Reddit, or Slack that swallows ten minutes before you notice the agent finished. Standboy gives you a small, contained distraction with a hard stop built in.
The extension hooks into Cursor's native agent and Claude Code through their official lifecycle APIs, so the panel appears on its own once the agent has actually been working for a few seconds. For agents it doesn't support directly, it falls back to an edit-burst heuristic. It won't strobe on quick turns.
Two limits matter before you install it. Standboy ships no games and links to no ROM sources, so you need your own legally obtained files. And it only plays Game Boy titles, not later handheld libraries.
Sound familiar? You start a refactor, hit send, and then... nothing for four minutes. Standboy fills that gap. It hooks into Cursor's native agent and Claude Code. Unsupported agents still get a fallback.
Getting Started
- Install from the VS Code Extensions panel by searching for Standboy, or run
code --install-extension mfbzme.standboy. Cursor reads Open VSX by default, so the same search works there. - On first launch the panel opens on its own. You'll see an empty header with a STANDBOY activity dot, a ROM title slot, a menu, and a mute icon, plus a blank frame that reads "no cartridge."
- Open the panel menu and toggle auto-show during AI activity. This is the one switch that wires Standboy to your agent's lifecycle.
- Load a ROM from disk. Standboy copies it into a managed library and matches it against a bundled No-Intro database, so the grid shows the real cover art and canonical title.
- Set your key bindings if the defaults don't suit you, then get back to work. The emulator takes over from there.
Product Information
A quick look at Standboy's pricing, supported platforms, and performance.
Best for
The users, tasks, and scenarios where this tool fits best.
Users
- Developers running AI coding agents
- Retro handheld fans who work in VS Code
- Cursor and Claude Code users
Tasks
- Filling agent wait time without leaving the editor
- Keeping a ROM library in one place
- Playing short bursts between tasks
Scenarios
- Long refactors or build-and-test loops
- Focused work from home
- Debugging sessions with repeated agent turns
Key features
Auto-show on agent activity
Standboy expands the sidebar panel when your AI agent starts working and tucks it away when the agent goes idle. It connects to Cursor's native agent and Claude Code through their official lifecycle APIs, and a single toggle in the panel menu wires it up. Agents without direct support fall back to an edit-burst heuristic, so the panel still reacts to real work rather than strobing on quick checks.
Mid-frame resume
The webview is retained when the panel hides, so the emulator pauses in place instead of resetting. The next time your agent wakes Standboy up, the game continues from the exact frame you left. For short play sessions, that means no replaying and no waiting for a save state to load.
Persistent ROM library and saves
Loaded ROMs are copied into a managed library, and in-game saves mirror to disk whenever the panel hides, the page unloads, or before you export. Between those writes, live state sits in IndexedDB, so progress survives unexpected closes. Both the library and the saves stay put across VS Code restarts.
Auto-identified covers and titles
Standboy matches your ROM dumps by SHA-1 against a bundled No-Intro database, the same approach RetroArch uses. The library grid then shows real box art and the canonical game title, no matter what the file is named on disk. It saves you from renaming and re-sorting files by hand.
Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance
The extension loads .gb, .gbc, and .gba ROMs, with the platform detected from the file extension. That covers three generations in one GB GBC GBA emulator. It doesn't emulate anything beyond those systems.
User-supplied ROMs only
Standboy bundles no games and points to no ROM sources. You bring your own legally obtained files from disk. That keeps the extension clean, but it also means the panel starts empty until you add something.
Five palettes plus custom colors
For the chrome, Standboy offers five built-in palettes and lets you define a custom four-hex array. Palette changes apply only to the interface around the game, so the game itself renders at native fidelity rather than getting a decorative filter.
No telemetry
The only outbound requests are one-shot cover-art fetches against libretro-thumbnails, made by the extension host rather than the game iframe, cached locally, and never repeated for the same ROM. The emulator and the No-Intro database are bundled and run offline, so the extension keeps working on a plane.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Auto-show ties the emulator to real agent activity, so it appears and disappears with your workflow instead of sitting open.
- Mid-frame resume means you never lose your place between agent turns.
- Persistent library, saves, and cover art survive restarts and unexpected closes.
- SHA-1 cover matching keeps the grid tidy even with badly named ROM files.
- No telemetry and offline playback, with the only network call being a cached cover fetch.
Cons
- Shipping no games means new users see an empty panel and have to source their own ROMs.
- Support is limited to Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, so later handhelds are out.
- Auto-show depends on agent lifecycle APIs, so unsupported agents fall back to a heuristic that may feel less precise.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Standboy is a free extension with no paid tier. You install it from the VS Code Marketplace or Open VSX and there's no subscription to manage.
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