Scientific Data Viewer - VSCode/Cursor Extension for xarray-based Data Exploration

[etienneschalk]

Hi everyone! I wanted to share a project I've been working on: Scientific Data Viewer, a VSCode/Cursor extension for exploring scientific data files directly in your IDE.

What it does

The extension lets you browse NetCDF, Zarr, HDF5, GRIB, GeoTIFF, and JPEG-2000 files without leaving your editor. It's built on top of xarray and provides:

• Interactive file structure exploration (dimensions, coordinates, variables, attributes)
• Familiar xarray HTML/text representations right in your IDE
• Basic data visualization with matplotlib (experimental)
• Right-click integration in the file explorer
• Automatic Python environment detection

Works with VSCode and Cursor

This extension is available on the VSCode Marketplace as well as the Open VSX Marketplace for the Cursor editor.

Currently in Development

This is very much a work in progress! The visualization features are experimental, and I'm actively looking for feedback and ideas from the community. If you work with scientific datasets and have thoughts on what would make this more useful, I'd love to hear them.

GitHub Repository: https://github.com/etienneschalk/scientific-data-viewer

Any suggestions, feature requests, or contributions are very welcome!

📸 Screenshot Gallery