Ticketpane brings persistent sign-in Jira client to VS Code, Cursor and Windsurf

A Jira sidebar built around staying signed in

A one-person company in New Mexico, operating as Geary Works, has released Ticketpane, a Jira Cloud client that lives in the sidebar of VS Code, Cursor and Windsurf. Announced in a post on dev.to on 11 September 2026, the extension's central pitch is persistence: you authenticate once and remain signed in across restarts, new windows and newly opened folders.

The developer positions the tool as a response to a gap in the ecosystem. According to figures cited in the dev.to post, Atlassian's official VS Code extension had about 3.3 million installs as of 10 September 2026 but an average rating of 2.55 stars across 231 reviews, with its issue tracker dominated by complaints that Jira and Bitbucket keep disconnecting and that authentication is demanded every time a new folder is opened. The post also states that the best-known community alternative has not been updated since 2020.

What the extension does

A My Issues panel lists unresolved work assigned to you, grouped by status, with a priority icon beside each item. Opening an issue renders it inside the editor: summary, status, assignee, priority, sprint, the full description and the comment thread, all converted from Jira's document format. You can move an issue through whichever transitions your workflow actually permits, leave a comment, or create a new issue without leaving the editor.

A branch-from-issue command right-clicks a ticket into a checked-out branch such as feature/APP-412-checkout-button-broken, with the naming template exposed as a setting. Saved JQL filters, support for multiple Jira sites, opening issues in the browser and copying keys or URLs complete the feature set.

How the sign-in persists

Ticketpane skips OAuth entirely. You paste an Atlassian API token once — the classic or the newer scoped kind both work — and the extension stores it in the editor's encrypted secret storage, which is why the credential survives restarts and new windows. The developer says the tool also detects when a scoped token only responds via Atlassian's API gateway, rather than reporting it as invalid.

Because there is no intermediary, issue data and credentials travel directly between the editor and Atlassian; the developer states that no Ticketpane server exists in the path.

Free tier, $19 one-time Pro

The free tier is permanent and covers the My Issues list, reading any issue with description and comments, opening in the browser and copying keys or URLs, limited to one Jira site. A one-time $19 Pro licence per developer adds status changes, commenting, issue creation, branch-from-issue, saved JQL filters and unlimited sites — a deliberate rejection of the subscription model common in editor tooling. Every Pro feature runs free for the first 14 days without a payment card, refunds are honoured within the same window for any reason, and payments are handled by Polar, with each licence key valid on up to three machines.

Limits, stated up front

The announcement is unusually candid about shortcomings. Ticketpane supports Jira Cloud only, and the developer has no plans to add Jira Server or Data Center. Lists cap at the first 100 issues with no paging; comments show the newest 50 and cannot be edited or deleted; issue creation covers project, type, summary and description only, so projects with additional required fields will reject creates until those fields are set in the browser. There are no worklogs, no editing of fields other than status, and no offline cache.

The developer also acknowledges the extension has only been tested against one small Jira Cloud site, so large projects, exotic custom fields and non-English content remain unproven. Every request gives up after 30 seconds with no retry queue. Offline, Pro keeps working for seven days from the last licence check before falling back to the free tier, and on Linux systems without an OS keyring, sign-in fails with an error rather than writing the token to disk in plain text. Crash reporting is off by default, respects the editor's telemetry setting, and never includes tokens, site names or issue content. Geary Works also discloses that the extension was built with substantial help from Claude Code, while stating that a human remains responsible for the code and the claims.

Why it matters

For developers who live in both Jira and an editor, the constant flip to a browser tab for a ticket number or a comment is a small but repeated cost, and the official extension's rating suggests Atlassian has not solved it to users' satisfaction. Ticketpane's combination of a direct-to-Atlassian architecture, encrypted local credential storage and one-time pricing offers a credible alternative shape for this category. The honest limits list cuts both ways: it signals care, but also that this is a single-developer product proven on one small site. With a permanent free tier and a two-week trial of every Pro feature, the risk of finding out whether it fits is close to zero — the real test will be whether it holds up against the large projects and edge cases its author admits it has not yet met.