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VS Code Extension Package

VS Code extensions with commands, activation events, webviews, or workspace integrations.

Charter status

Charter status Value
Maturity Backlog
What this state means The stack shape is recorded so gap reports name the right standard. Nobody is working toward a rubric, and nothing on the page is judgeable.
Full rubric Not authored yet. This page is a charter, not a judgeable standard.
Reference implementation vibecodeqa/ref-vscode-extension-package (experimental) — see Reference implementation below.
Blocking promotion Demoted on 2026-08-09 (#37) because the only consumer the charter cited, vibecodeqa/vscode, was archived on 2026-07-23 without ever being published. A reference repo has since been built and is cataloged as experimental (#19), which is why the demotion reason no longer stands alone. Detection was repaired on 2026-08-11 (#47): the archetype now matches on engines.vscode or contributes, so the gap report a backlog entry exists to produce finally names this standard instead of typescript-sdk. Still blocking any promotion: this page carries no numbered candidate rules, no severity or exception policy, and no rubric can be cut from it. The page stays published so its URL keeps resolving.

Maturity states are defined in Standards Authoring. Metadata lives in standards/registry.json.

Full rubric

No full versioned rubric has been authored yet.

Reference implementation

Score evidence Value
Repository vibecodeqa/ref-vscode-extension-package (experimental)
VCQA report A 99/100
Verification self-reported
Assessed commit ca7525f
Assessed on 2026-08-09
CI run success (2026-08-08)
Independent assessment None published yet. The score above is the reference repo's own claim, not third-party proof.
Catalog entry last verified 2026-08-09

Scope

VS Code extensions with commands, activation events, webviews, or workspace integrations.

Not in scope

  • generic Node libraries
  • browser-only apps
  • editor configs with no extension host code

Composes

VCQA-owned rule surface

  • activation event scope.
  • workspace trust behavior.
  • command and webview boundaries.
  • marketplace metadata.
  • extension test coverage.

Detection signals

The resolver matches this archetype when a package declares either of the first two, which are the fields the Marketplace requires of an extension and the only ones cheap enough to read from a manifest. The rest are corroborating signals a judge reads once the archetype has matched.

  • engines.vscode in package.json — resolver signal
  • a contributes block in package.json — resolver signal
  • activation events
  • extension entrypoint
  • webview usage

The deprecated vscode npm package is deliberately not a signal: it was superseded by @types/vscode and @vscode/test-electron in 2019, so depending on it is a finding, not a qualification.

Combination-born guidelines

  • Activation events should be narrow enough to avoid needless startup cost.
  • Webviews require CSP and constrained message handling.
  • Workspace trust controls privileged file or command behavior.

Benefits

  • None current. vibecodeqa/vscode was the only cited consumer and it was archived on 2026-07-23 without ever being published to the marketplace; the MCP server is VCQA's editor surface instead. This charter is kept because the stack shape is real and the resolver should still name it when a repository matches, not because anything in VCQA depends on it.

Independent Assessment