Using AI extensions in VSCode from Russia on remote hosts

🗓️Wed 25 March 2026 #roocode, #proxy, #ai, #russia, #vscode

You live in Russia and do software development and can't connect to foreign AI providers on your development or production server but you have http proxy running on your primary device (laptop/desktop) on local-port?

Follow this simple 4 steps.

I'm using RooCode as AI extension example

  1. Add "RemoteForward" to each remote host you want to use Roocode on. Where remote-port is the port you want assign proxy to on that remote

    Host name
 HostName ip
 User user
 RemoteForward remote-port 127.0.0.1:local-port
  2. Connect to that host both in VScode AND in the terminal (via ssh name). For some reason connecting only in VSCodium (yes, I use VSCodium, not VSCode) was not enough for me. Seems like it's built-in ssh client won't allow RemoteForward directive.
  3. In VSCode setting set up Proxy http://localhost:remote-port. Edit -> Preferences -> Settings -> Remote name -> HTTP Proxy

Viola. RooCode should access all models and providers via your local proxy now.