Developers love using Neon branches for a local development, due to the agility they provide (e.g. fast resets, isolated environments, and the ability to test without polluting production data). But using Neon branches still requires you to manage separate connection strings for different branches and ensure your application and its environment is properly set up to connect.
Today, that gets a lot easier, especially if you’re a VS Code user! We’re launching Neon Local Connect, a new VS Code extension that connects your Neon database to your local dev environment using a static localhost connection string.
You can browse your tables, create or reset branches, launch ephemeral test environments, and run queries all from inside your IDE.Behind the scenes, the extension builds on Neon Local, our open-source Docker proxy for connecting to Neon over localhost . But now, it’s fully integrated into VS Code, no CLI setup required.
Branching That Feels Local
Running Postgres locally works – until you need it to stay in sync with the rest of your team.
You’re responsible for installing the right version, managing credentials, seeding realistic data, resetting state between test runs, and isolating changes from other projects on your machine. If you’re working in a team, there’s no guarantee your local database matches production or even your teammate’s dev environment. Schema drift is common. Rollbacks are manual. Spinning up a clean environment means rebuilding everything from scratch.
That’s why Neon branches help so much with this workflow. In case you’re not familiar with them, a branch in Neon is a full, isolated copy of your database created instantly from any parent. It has great potential for improving local workflows:
It gives you a clean slate for every feature, test, or teammate
With zero risk of corrupting production or shared dev data (branches are isolated and have their own compute endpoint)
You can reset instantly to a known schema and data snapshot, avoiding drift
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