An extensible mechanism for executing code on one of one or more servers and in association with one of one or more client applications (i.e. “clients”). In accordance with a model of the extensible mechanism, the execution of server side code is partitioned into three stages, a view stage for determining the code for running, a server stage for determining the server to execute the code and a launcher stage to determine the client for interacting with the server to run the code. Lists of processing elements at each stage extensibly configure the mechanism to work with different types of server side code to be run, different servers to run the code and different clients with which to interact with the server running the code. By modeling the execution of server side code in stages and using lists of processing elements, the mechanism is easily extended to new code types, servers and launchers. The extensible mechanism can be plugged into or otherwise adapt another application, for example, an integrated development environment.