Frequently Asked Questions

Mouse is a precision file-editing toolkit for AI coding agents. It provides coordinate-based editing, atomic batching, and full rollback capabilities that eliminate Execution Slop—when an agent makes the right plan, calls the right tool, but still produces the wrong output.

Execution Slop is when an AI coding agent understands the task, selects the correct editing operation, but the edit still fails—wrong line, mangled syntax, corrupted file. It's the gap between intent and outcome. Mouse's precision tools close this gap.

Mouse is the only tool that offers coordinate-based addressing (edit by line/column without echoing content), zero content-echo (70% fewer output tokens), atomic batching (all-or-nothing operations), in-place refinement (adjust staged edits without starting over), and embedded agent guidance and context management including next-action suggestions, blast-radius warnings, proactive state reminders, and more. See our Features page for a full comparison.

Mouse is compatible with a range of integrated development environments, AI coding clients, and models via the Model Context Protocol (MCP), including GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, and more. Please see our Features page for a complete compatibility summary.

To install Mouse, navigate to the VS Code Marketplace or Open VSX inside your IDE, search for “Mouse” by HIC AI, Inc., and click “Install”. Then, open the Command Palette (Ctrl-Shift-P on a PC, or Cmd-Shift-P on a Mac), enter “Mouse: Initialize Workspace”, and select your coding assistant from the dropdown menu. Click on the popup button to refresh your Developer Window, and Mouse will be automatically added to your MCP config file (or one will be generated automatically for you if you don't have one already), and your agent is all set to begin using Mouse for precision file navigation and editing! Please see our Onboarding Guide for full details.

Mouse currently supports VS Code, Cursor, and Kiro. The installation and setup process is identical across all of them.

Yes, Mouse works entirely locally on your device. However, you'll need internet access for initial license activation and periodic validation. Please contact us at sales@hic-ai.com if you need a complete air-gapped solution for your organization.

Mouse requires a supported IDE along with Node.js 20+. The extension uses approximately 1.3MB of disk space. There are no special hardware requirements.

Individual: $15/month ($150/year, save $30). Business: $35/seat/month ($350/seat/year). Both plans include a 14-day free trial. All prices exclude applicable taxes.

Yes! Individual plans include a 14-day free trial with no credit card, email, or account required. You get full access to all features during the trial.

Yes! Both Individual and Business plans permit commercial use, subject to our Terms of Service.

Each VS Code installation on a unique machine or container counts as one device. Individual plans allow 3 concurrent devices; Business plans allow 5 concurrent devices per seat. You can deactivate old devices anytime from your portal to free up slots.

Example: You maintain two repositories on your local laptop at ~/source/repos/my-repo-1 and ~/source/repos/my-repo-2, and you initialize Mouse in both workspaces in VS Code. This counts as one device.

Example: While working on ~/source/repos/my-repo-1 inside VS Code, you decide to spin up a GitHub Codespaces container and work in the browser on ~/source/repos/my-repo-2 at the same time. This will count as two devices.

Unfortunately, we are unable to permit Individual subscriptions to convert to Business or vice versa at this time through our self-checkout process. If you would like to upgrade from Individual to Business or downgrade from Business to Individual, please contact billing@hic-ai.com for assistance. You can always switch at any time from monthly to annual payment schedules (or vice versa), update your payment information, and (for Business subscriptions) add or remove seats.

Yes. If you're not satisfied within the first 30 days of your initial purchase, contact us at billing@hic-ai.com for a full refund. No questions asked. See our Refund & Cancellation Policy for full details.

We accept all major credit cards, as well as numerous local payment methods depending on your region. Payments are processed securely by our payment vendor, Stripe, and handled by our merchant of record, Stripe Managed Payments.

Charges for your Mouse subscription will appear as: HIC AI INC.

Yes, we provide volume discounts for 100 or more licenses. Please contact sales at sales@hic-ai.com for more information.

No. Mouse operates exclusively locally on your device. We do not collect, transmit, or store your source code, file contents, AI prompts, AI responses, or keystrokes. See our Privacy Policy for details.

We collect only: account/payment information, license validation requests, and device identifiers (for activation limits). We never see your code or AI conversations.

We take security concerns very seriously. If you believe you have discovered a genuine security vulnerability or weakness, we ask that you contact us privately, without posting a GitHub Issue, by emailing us at: security@hic-ai.com. Someone will get back to you within 24 hours with a response. Please note that we do not have a Bug Bounty Program at this time.

Mouse provides 11 tools: 6 file reading tools (read_first_n_lines, read_last_n_lines, read_lines, jump_to_line_n, find_in_file, get_file_metadata), 2 editing tools (quick_edit, batch_quick_edit), and 2 staging tools (save_changes, cancel_changes), as well as 1 lightweight license_status tool which remains active even if your subscription or trial has expired.

Atomic batching groups multiple edits into a single operation. Either all changes succeed or none do—if any edit fails, Mouse automatically rolls back all changes. Your codebase is never left in a broken intermediate state.

Instead of requiring agents to use find-and-replace for every edit operation, Mouse allows agents to use a coordinate-based declarative syntax that addresses file content by position (line number and character offsets). To accommodate the wide array and range of AI agent models and outputs, Mouse provides a two-tier schema design, offering both verbose and compact notations. The compact notation (e.g., region: [[10, 5], [10, 20]] for a character-level range) significantly reduces output tokens over the verbose notation (e.g., startLine: 10, startChar: 5, endLine: 10, endChar: 20). Both notations are particularly useful in handling tabular data such as ASCII tables and CSV files and for a variety of other file-editing settings, and the system accepts either schema interchangeably.

When an agent catches its own mistake in staged edits, it can adjust pending changes without starting over. This enables self-correction without human intervention—a capability unique to Mouse.

Individual plan: Community support via GitHub Issues. Business plan: Priority email support at support@hic-ai.com with 24-hour response time.

Please report bugs on our GitHub Issues page. Include your VS Code version, Mouse version, and steps to reproduce the issue.

We provide detailed documentation and a summary of our research on this site, and we will be adding to those pages regularly. Feel free to contact us at info@hic-ai.com for any other inquiries.

Absolutely! Please submit feature requests on the GitHub Discussions - Ideas page.